Local O&G manpower companies are always looking to improve their offshore construction norms - self-improvement or client request? idk. Many are still using norms from the 70/80s. How do we account for improvements in technology? We And how do we quantify it?

Via KPI monitoring, we can compare estimated manhours to complete a job to the actual manhours spent on-site for several thousand data points. Then apply statistical analysis to determine appropriate norms or offshore factor.

well, it could be...worse? at least it's not data management.

I don't think the position will be directly related to PE. Although petroleum engineering does involve looking at large datasets for several reasons, such as to find trends, justify technical/economic decisions and obtain mathematical approximations, I think that those tasks would be handled by the petroleum engineer themselves rather than being delegated to a "data analyst".

That being said, you would probably still be analyzing data typical of the industry, e.g. if you are handling production data then expect to see data units of MMscf, Mbbl, etc. Worth noting that your familiarity with the industry could also explain why the company would take you in but not for a petroleum engineering position.

So your job scope might lie somewhere in between data analysis done by petroleum engineer's and the mindless keyboard-punching tasks done by technical assistants. Depends on your company too. Large O&G companies especially operators have large PE departments comprising of individuals with very specific roles, in that case your "data analyst" position could indeed be a real data analyst position (and I do hope that is the case).

Disclaimer: the answer above is based on speculation and anecdotal experience; I have not seen a job description for a data analyst in an oil & gas company.