Dear SPE Members and Petroleum Engineering Students!
We are looking for creative minds to share our vision for the future of the SPE Student Chapter Leoben. Take a look at our job openings and apply if you find working at the SPE Student Chapter would be something for you.
Take the chance to fill a position of your choice – due to the progress of their studies, the current board will no longer be available for 2017. All available positions are described in detail, accessible via the following link:
Arriving in Clausthal in the middle of the night, we soon went to sleep, because we knew the next day would be long: In the early morning of December 8, we’d meet our German colleagues as well as a delegation of Russian students to go to Celle, the heart of German oil production, or as it is also referred to, the “German Texas”. Many oil field service providers are located in Celle – and we had the opportunity to visit one of them: Halliburton.
Being welcomed by to young engineers who had recently graduated from TU Clausthal, we received a short introduction to “the Reds”, the World’s largest oil field service company. After that, our groups got a tour through the cement lab, where Halliburton experts can test the properties of cement slurries not only under atmospheric, but also under the HPHT conditions that are encountered in the well. Moreover, we got to see their workshops and field equipment, such as high pressure pumping units ro coiled tubing trucks. Seeing all this high-tech equipment left us in awe, but on the other hand the possibility to see those things stacked also reminded us of the state our industry is in.
Halliburton’s heavy coiled tubing equipment stacked in Celle
Our second stop after lunch was the Drilling Simulator Celle, a sophisticated and ambitious research project also led by TU Clausthal. The drilling simulator is split into two parts – a software, and a hardware part. The software part is a simulation program that allows the replication of drilling, tripping etc. operations, but with some advanced programming going on, the ambitious goal is also to incorporate a realistic simulation of non-normal drilling operations, mainly their occurrence. For example, the plan is to allow kicks to occur when entering a high-pressure zone “automatically”, instead of at the order of the controller; likewise, drill bit wear (due to normal operations as well as because of poor drilling practice) will be simulated in the future.
Training for our future jobs – at the Drilling Simulator Celle. We still have to get used to wearing safety equipment, though…
The second part is the hardware part, which is still under construction. It consists of a 60m long horizontal casing section, at the end of which 5m of pressurized rock sample will be placed. By applying backpressure, it will be possible to simulate downhole conditions of up to 100bar with this tool, which is supposed to be completed in the first quarter of next year.
Horizontally aligned top drive of Drilling Simulator Celle’s hardware part
After dinner in Clausthal, our cultural program continued with a short trip to the nearby city of Goslar, where we visited the Christmas market, which is said to be one of the most beautiful ones in Germany – a fact that our delegation said is doubtlessly true.
The next day, we took another trip to Goslar to see the picturesque old city, which seems not to have changed in the last three centuries. The Christmas Gala then started at 4p.m. in the Aula of TU Clausthal. We heard some motivating and inspiring speeches by the department head of TU Clausthal Prof. Joachim Oppelt, SPE German Section representative Ingo Forstner and SPE South, Central and Eastern Europe Regional Director Matthias Meister, who talked about how to get the most out of your SPE membership (join, attend events, and volunteer, by the way). The highlight of the evening was Mr Darcy Spady’s talk. The 2018 SPE International president talked about his career (which he said is an example of what not to do and still succeed), and what we as the future of our industry will have to deal with – both the challenges we will face on a professional working level and in the Society of Petroleum Engineers. The whole ceremony was accompanied by musical performances of students at TU Clausthal.
Music act by TU Clausthal students
After the speeches, the dinner gave us a nice opportunity to talk to old friends and make new ones over a wide selection of German food and their famous beer.
Already being close by, we decided to postpone our return to Leoben and visit Hannover and its local Christmas market on Saturday before packing our suitcases and returning to our own beloved Alma Mater Leobiensis.
A great Thank You to the TU Clausthal SPE Student Chapter for their hospitality and this inspiring Christmas party – it was a pleasure to be there!
Starting now, we will only send you a weekly newsletter stating the lastest events, publications and any industry related stuff. This means, no more mails for an event there, a reminder over this fancy old mail address and some other mails, where you have to ask yourself what to do and reply first to understand what you read. Make sure you add our new email address to your contacts.
We all know it will be difficult for all of us, as we have built a culture of forwarding without thinking, reminding you about things you have never heard in the first part and so on.
All Mails, all information will be centrally gathered and then sent on Monday mornings each week. If there is nothing to say – well then we will not send you an email – very simple.
To make sure you will receive this mails, make sure you add our new mail address to your contact information. You will receive this mails as you are now in the mailing list we put together with the help of SPE International. If not, make sure you become a member here.
We have informed our friends at the department, at our represented societies to forward all mails to us first so we can summarize it into our weekly mail. Of course this will work only if we all pull together on one string and we are looking forward making the life easier for you.
If there is an event you signed up to – you will get a reminder normally 48h before the event or if necessary more information. But we will talkt about our events in a different topic, as we also changed there some things for you.
Onboarding, also known as organizational socialization, refers to the mechanism through which new students acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become effective organizational members and insiders.
Bauer, T. N (2011)
Dear Students, as we already mentioned in the earlier post “the change process”, we strive to achieve a better, easier and more user friendlier future with more benefits for you, we were looking into several topics and processes that we had in place over the past years and decades.
One of the processes we analyzed was the “onboarding process” or in a less formal way the join / sing up procedure. There were different systems in place starting from signing pages, paying money to officers and writing down your email address in some Excel sheet up to facebook sign up buttons and many many more.
As we offered other petroleum societies collaboration partners that we represent their interests as a “ONE-STOP-SHOP” under the new branding “Montanuniversitaet Leoben SPE Student Chapter” we also included their registration forms.
So now what does that mean for you becoming a member or renewing your membership:
only one page for onboarding that is updated if we will offer new petroleum societies
less emails during the processing period
no worrying about deadlines of payment and so on, we will inform you about your dues
instant access to all future events with your SPE International Member Number
We offer the same what we did before but one more thing – the Petroleum Engineering Club Package. This gives you the benefit of your local SPE Student Chapter for 10€ and the additional benefit of the ÖGEW & WPC for an additional 10€ instead of ÖGEW alone at 15€. This offers you now the possibility to choose either the local chapter, the ÖGEW, the WPC alone or however you like it or all together.
So we are looking forward for your replies and seeing you at one of our many events in the future. Next topics we will discuss are mailing and events, as we also improved this two things.
As students we are constantly increasing our knowledge about specific technical topics during the course of our studies. Nevertheless success is not only based on technical skills. The oil industry is a global industry and more than ever it is necessary to master soft skills as well. To cover this highly interesting and important topic, the Montanuniversitaet Leoben SPE Student Chapter organised a two days softskill-workshop which took place from the 2nd to the 3rd December 2016.
The workshop was held by Lori and Dwyann Dalrymple who are running their own company, which is specialised in teaching industry professionals and students how to utilise soft skills in the work life.
The workshop began by giving a presentation. The presentation had to be prepared at home, about a topic of our choice. The presentation was recorded for further evaluation. Several different topics were addressed. The topics ranged from people talking about their hometown, to an introduction how to use a specific software properly.
The afternoon was dedicated to the topic, “How to make you a dynamic presenter”. Lori gave a lot of useful insights how to improve the presentation style and the overall communication skills. What was obvious from the beginning, often only little changes can make a big difference. Furthermore it is very important to know who is going to be the audience. Especially for presentations in the oil industry where it is very likely to face a multicultural audience. These and more techniques how to improve the presentations were introduced during the afternoon session.
The second day started by a mock interview session. Dwyann who already has more than thirty years of experience in hiring and also firing people, faced us with some ideas how a real interview session could look like. We had to answer questions about ourselves but also some questions which were a little bit outside of the box. Have you ever asked yourself which animal you would like to be? Maybe you should ask yourself before the next interview.
Afterwards we continued by giving the same presentation than yesterday but this time with incorporating all the learned techniques. The presentations were recorded and feedback about that material is going to be sent to all the participants in a few weeks.
Group Picture
Finally at the end of the second day Dwyann gave two interesting technical presentations. One about hydraulic and fracturing and the other about the production of water, possible causes for that and how to deal with it. This was a perfect opportunity for the participants to see how soft and technical skills can be combined to be an effective presenter.
In the end the Montanuniversitaet Leoben SPE Student Chapter would like to thank Lori and Dwyann very much for their time and effort to make this workshop possible. It was a great pleasure for us to learn from your experience, expertise and knowledge. We are looking forward to repeat that in the future.
If you want to have further information about Lori and Dwyanns expertise and their company please follow the link to their homepage:
