They then choose a place to drill a well, decide how to extract it, and supervise drilling operations. Petroleum engineers work to make extracting the fuel easier. They may do research on ways of drilling and develop new ways to recover oil and gas. To get the fuel out of the ground, they may inject water, chemicals, or steam to force out more of the oil. At other times they may use horizontal drilling to connect more of a reservoir to a well.
Petroleum engineers plan systems that pipe the fuel out and treat it.
These systems receive, purify, and separate oil and gas products from wells. Engineers find safe and economical ways to move extracted oil and gas from the well to refineries for processing. Petroleum Engineers is in the Engineering, Science, and Technologies Career Cluster.