Abstract: Editor's Note: The following article is a slightly revised and condensed version of a written report submitted to the Board of Directors of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME at its Oct. 11 meeting in Houston, Tex. The author, Dr. Monroe W. Kriegel, was commissioned by the Board last June to conduct a study to determine the continuing education needs of the Society's 14,000 members - a study which would result in specific recommendations for the development of a program by which SPE could assist members who are genuinely interested in improving their technical competence. At its Oct. 11 meeting, the Board directed that Dr. Kriegel's report be published in JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY for the information of interested SPE members; following publication the article will be distributed to heads of petroleum engineering departments, college and university deans, to oil company executives, to other engineering societies, and to the various oil industry trade publications, along with a letter from SPE President John C. Calhoun, Jr.. requesting comments from these groups. The Board also charged the SPE Education Committee and the Headquarters star with the responsibility of developing specific recommendations for implementing the program. Scope of Investigation The Board of Directors of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME retained the author to make a study of the continuing education needs of its members. The study was to include:a definition of the nature of the problem through extensive interviews and correspondence with members, educators and company officials;an investigation of current and proposed adult education programs offered by various major universities in petroleum and other fields of engineering;the extent of involvement of various agencies of the Federal Government in programs for Lip-dating the competence of scientists and engineers;the status of self-instruction manuals;the work being performed by other professional societies for their members: anda study of the role of various petroleum producing and service company methods of training. Finally, the future role of SPE was to be defined in recommendations for a broad program for raising the general level of technical competence of engineers engaged in the production phase of the petroleum industry. The results of this study and the author's recommendations are presented in this article. The Appendix includes the results of a questionnaire survey conducted among a sampling of the SPE membership. Approach The opinions of individual members were gained from an analysis of 300 questionnaires received from a mailing to 807 SPE members (see the Appendix), and by personal interviews with local section members at Liberal, Kans.; Hobbs, N.M.; Bartlesville, Okla.; and Amarillo, Dallas. Lubbock, Pampa and Snyder, Tex.The viewpoints of university people were obtained by personal interviews with Robert L. Whiting. Texas A and M U.; E. T. Guerrero, U. of Tulsa; John M. Campbell, The U. of Oklahoma; and Duane A. Crawford and Philip Johnson, Texas Technological College. Company opinions and attitudes were obtained by personal interviews with the officials and employees of Amerada Petroleum Corp., Pan American Petroleum Corp., Cities Service Oil Co., Sinclair Oil and Gas Co., Jersey Production Research Co., The Atlantic Refining Co., Dowell Div. of The Dow Chemical Co., Sunray DX Oil Co., and Core Laboratories, Inc. The national picture of continuing education for all engineers was obtained principally by attending the annual meeting of the American Society for Engineering Education. (Seven parts of that program dealt with various phases of adult education, indicating the degree of interest in this subject among engineering educators.)Through the courtesy of R. William Taylor, AIME General Secretary, reports were obtained on the continuing education activities of the other engineering societies, and personal interviews were held in New York with representatives of the Metallurgical Society of AIME, AIChE, IEEE and AIIE. The work of the American Society for Metals was obtained by correspondence, while a personal interview with Dr. Francis Pruitt, director of postgraduate studies for Hillcrest Medical Center, yielded the program for the medical profession. P. 1337^

Abstract: Editor's Note: The following is the last in a series of four articles concerning inter-industry competition in the domestic fuel market. Published in consecutive issues of JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY, each of the papers approaches the widely (and often heatedly) debated subject from the viewpoint of a different segment of the energy producing-marketing field. Obviously, the ideas and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the majority of SPE members but, rather, are presented solely for the purpose of providing the reader with further insight into this controversial problem. General Trends Since 1950 During the last decade, pronounced changes occurred in the competitive pattern of the fossil fuels. The purpose of this paper is twofold--to describe interfuels competition as it relates to the overall economy, andto examine the comparative positions of the fossil fuels as they compete in a specific market the electric utility industry. Table 1 shows the growth in the consumption of coal, oil, gas and water power during the past decade. Uses which are not directly competitive among the fuels, such as tractor fuel, carbon black and consumption of petroleum products in the making of synthetic rubber, have been excluded from these statistics. The experience of the three fossil fuels in competition since 1950 shows that natural gas has expanded approximately twice as rapidly as oil-with gas-consumption growing 219 per cent compared to a 124.1 per cent growth in Btu's of oil consumed in the 10-year period. Percentagewise, water power did little more than hold its own, and coal (including anthracite) actually decreased more than 20 per cent. Looking at this another way, in 1950 coal accounted for 50.6 per cent of the total competitive fuel market; 10-years later, however, its contribution had dropped to 33.8 per cent--still more than any competing fuel, but only slightly higher than natural gas. Hydro power has not been considered in this study because it has grown but slightly since 1950; throughout the 10-year period, it has played only a very minor part in the competitive fuels picture. Omitting water power, therefore, the three fossil fuels together have picked up a net consumption of 4.1 quadrillion Btu's during the decade. Individually, natural gas gained 5.5 and oil 1.5 quadrillion, while coal lost 2.9 quadrillion. With the exception of the electric utility market, relatively little of a reliable nature is known about detailed costs and Btu content involved in the consumption of these competing fuels in industry, in general commercial use and in residential use. With respect to the third category, information is available for gas and oil, particularly gas; but residential coal consumption is an area for which few data are available. Since 1950, therefore, natural gas has made substantial strides in penetrating the competitive market for fuels, while oil (excluding noncompetitive uses) has had a much more sluggish growth. As noted, water power is considerably less important than any of-the fossil fuels and, of course, is limited to the field of power production. Coal's slippage in the competitive market, at least partly the result of below-cost pricing practices by some of its competitors, may slow down or the trend may even be reversed if current cost trends in the three industries are maintained. However, this possibility will not be explored here. Fossil Fuels Consumption in the Electric Utility Market Fortunately, complete and accurate statistics are available to show the experience of each of the fossil fuels in meeting the energy demands of the electric utility industry. Tables 1 through 4 are based on information furnished the Federal Power Commission by all but a very small number of electric power companies. These official reports permit an analysis to be made of trends and relationships among the fossil fuels, an analysis which is not practicable in any other market jointly served by coal, oil and gas. Table 2 shows, for the United States and for each of the four U. S. Census Bureau regions where coal, oil and gas are in active and effective competition, the 1950-to–1959 growth of utility consumption of each of these fuels in terms of coal or coal equivalent tons. Inclusion of other regions where coal's sales are negligible, or where any one of the three fuels far out-distances the others in consumption, would distort this comparison and would make it meaningless for the most part. P. 1071^

Abstract: The subject of the type of training desirable for petroleum engineers has been discussed frequently in meetings of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Generally speaking, undergraduate petroleum engineering training has moved from emphasis on "know- how'* to "know-why". This leaves the responsibility with the employer of instilling the "know-how" into the new engineer, and various companies face this problem in different ways. Graduate and postgraduate training are important, but in the final analysis the long-range value of the engineer will be his willingness to carry forward with a continued program of self-education. The Undergraduate Curriculum Undergraduate study involves the brief period of four academic years. From this we have come to expect the achievement of a broad-background training, well-founded in the pure and applied sciences, in the new mathematics and in the humanities. Industry does not expect a finished engineer to emerge from this brief training, but these basic courses represent the background from which engineers are made. We must commend engineering schools, and their industry support through ECPD, for the vast strides and improvements which have been made in recent years in switching to the "know-why" type of engineering curriculum. This improved curriculum is now quite universally adopted by the engineering schools throughout North America. It appears that the necessity for this switch in emphasis in specifying the undergraduate curriculum is now quite well understood. Only an engineering generation or so ago, schools endeavored to produce a "finished" engineer. This young engineering graduate generally entered industry in a business organization which was small by present-day standards. These organizations frequently had engineering staffs consisting of a few men working closely throughout the entire span of the firm's technical and operating problems. The technology of the time would not begin to hold a candle to the technical complexity of our modern-day industry, although it quite justly appeared to the professional engineers of that day to have been highly advanced. Today our engineering effort is generally accomplished by large teams of professionals. No more do we expect the new engineering graduate to undertake alone the design of a complete rotary rig with all its related drilling and production equipment. Nor do we expect him to design a new ocean-floor well-completion installation, anymore than we would expect a human being with a slide rule to compute the gasoline tax cut out of the millions of service-station sales slips which are fed into our mechanized credit-card accounting systems. The education of an engineer in today's complex industrial society has to be the result of a progressive stepwise effort with the engineering schools forging the initial link. Postgraduate Training Our present philosophy of engineering education calls upon industry to provide the "know-how" finish to the engineer's academic work. This highly important phase of engineering education has received relatively little attention in the recent past. As we consider this subject we must bear in mind that we are dealing with companies which differ widely in size and method of operation. Also we must keep in mind that these young men are their full-time employees. Generally the new engineering graduates comprise only a small segment of the total payroll. Many employers feel that they must maintain a high degree of uniformity in dealing with all personnel, both hourly-paid and professional. It is obvious that we cannot apply the basic approach of the ECPD accreditation program in dealing with this portion of engineering education. Still the engineering profession can profit, both now and in the future, from some careful attention to this increasingly essential phase of our evolving scheme of engineering education. Specific Instances Citing a few specific instances will demonstrate the meaning and importance of the industrial phase of post-graduate engineering education:A graduate who reports, "I learned more in the first six months after I got out of school than I did in all four years on the campus."The independent oilman who is looking for an engineering graduate a few years out of school whom he can hire from a major oil company to help him run his business. (In my own company, we still look back with considerable chagrin at the audacity of one independent who placed an advertisement in the help-wanted section of a trade journal indicating "Pan American engineer preferred".)The man in an engineering classification who comments that he can make quite a good living without having to actually make use of all of that mathematics and chemistry learned in school.The observation that the great bulk of engineering papers written by men in the operating phase of industry are published during the first five years after they leave the campus.The engineering professor who complains that "We train them as engineers, and industry uses them as clerks".The frequently heard advice that an engineering graduate should work for a year or so in industry before entering graduate school. Some of these observations are causes, others are effects; however, all relate to the problems and frequent misunderstanding of the essential role which industry assumes when we request our engineering schools to teach just the basics and let industry see the job to completion from there. Company Training Programs Our corporate, industrial organizations vary greatly in their approach to the postgraduate training of the new engineering graduate. Some large and very successful concerns have no formality whatsoever to their training programs. These seem to operate more or less by letting nature take its course. Some surprisingly good engineers are developed in this type of environment. JPT P. 730^