I just did that, switched from semiconductor manufacturing to oil and gas vendors. I join them as a junior position so it's kinda like I start all over again.

Honestly, technical experience in manufacturing doesn't really help in securing the place. I'd say soft skills, project management skills, multi-tasking capabilities would be at least useful. I leveraged on those points and the rest is history.

Know and understand your strengths. Good luck.

Almost 24. Graduated at 21, travelled in the states for almost half a year, worked in manufacturing for almost 2 years and, now under 3 months training for design engineer for subsea division. I hope I'd be absorbed into project management team or after market team, so I'd have more on-site experience. See how it goes from here then..

Anyway, if you're with commitments such as family, kids, housing loans, then starting over could be very risky. It's not impossible with careful planning of cash flow but future career progression could be a disturbing issue.

What's your background and what are holding you back, if you don't mind?

Regret for not choosing geology..

Murphy operates the SPAR platform at Sabah offshore, known as Kikeh.



source: http://www.oilmarketer.co.uk/2007/08/22/mu...er-kikeh-field/


This post has been edited by yeahs4.1: Dec 17 2011, 10:34 AM

Whoa, never knew that.

Btw Azraeil, what's your take on the career path of electrical/control engineering on topside? I do not have any mechanical/petroleum engineering background but that's how far I've gotten myself to. I wonder if i can go further in this field

Yes, my plan is to join O&G operators in another 2 to 5 years. Currently I'm with one of the wellhead/subsea trees equipment suppliers so I think this is a good opportunity that I cann't put into waste.
Basically I would be given choice of Instrumental team(multi phrase flow meter, sensors) or Topside Electrical team(SPCU, MCS). Since my aim is to join operators, I believe working with Topside would give me more advantage in terms of networking, exposure and probably offshore experience. Please advise.

Process is most likely in downstream, right?

This post has been edited by yeahs4.1: Dec 17 2011, 02:39 PM

Oh, glad to know that and thanks. I'll remember that.

Also, when the operators are hiring electrical guys, what are they looking for? How many years of experience? What kinda expertise?

I've got an copy of an article from SPE, which gives a summary of Indonesia deepwater field development technical, contracting and execution challenges, written by people from Chevron Corporation. It's a very interesting article about the factor of considerations major O&G operators take into account when during the field development stage.

It's a paid article so if anyone is interested I'll post it up here when i got home. Don't wanna do this from working PC.

Cheers.

Here: SPE

Well, IMO this is a tricky one.

For general context, I always refer oil companies as "operators", like shell, exxon, petronas, chevron, total.

For project related context at my work place, I refer them as "client/customers/end user" because they always hire some other 3rd party company to operates the rigs/field and the operations. The oil company is only overseeing the operations. In this circumstances, I'd refer the "operators" as the people that actually operates the rig/field.

Any experts that can clarify on these??