Yogashri Pradhan, MBA, P.E., joins The Crude Life to share her journey of becoming a production engineer and working in the Permian Basin in West Texas.
“At a very young age, my mom knew that I was good at math and science and she encouraged me to pursue a lot of those math and science initiatives such as math competition, science, science Olympiad, science fairs and that progressed to STEM interests,” Pradhan said. “But the initiatives didn't stop there. I was in an all-girls engineering camp that was hosted by the University of Houston when I was 14 years old.”
The oil and gas industry has integrated STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) through various educational initiatives and strategic partnerships. Industry leaders have provided funding, resources, and support for STEM education to foster the next generation of professionals.
Many companies have began sponsoring research programs that allow students and young researchers to develop innovative solutions and enhance their skills in STEM fields .
Furthermore, organizations have developed specialized training programs to address industry-specific needs, focusing on fields such as energy technology and digitalization, which are essential for advancing sustainability and innovation. Many efforts also target middle-skill workforce development, integrating practical problem-solving and mathematical skills into curricula to ensure a well-rounded STEM workforce.
“One of the types of engineering that I was introduced to was petroleum engineering,” Pradhan said. “I kept that in the back of my mind because the technologies to extract oil and gas from the ground geology was really cool to me.”
Growing up in Houston, Pradhan didn’t have any connections to oil and gas and was thinking about aerospace or computer engineering as a primary career.
“I am first generation oil and gas,” Pradhan said.
Pradhan talks about the technology involved with the oil and gas industry as well.
“There's a lot of data in oil and gas,” Pradhan said. “There's a lot of different types of data in oil and gas. However, the data science, data analytics, people gravitate towards a lot.”
She continued saying that there's “machine learning” and data science techniques that people are really interested in to get a better understanding of how can the industry can be better in predicting how the wells are going to perform.
“How are we going to be better at predicting, how are we going to operate whenever we produce these wells or whenever we are developing wells,” Pradhan said. “So that's the data science perspective of it.”
Pradhan continued citing angles and elements of data, science and industry analytics.
“Then there are comments on with the environment, for example, how do we safely produce barrels?” Pradhan said. “And when we safely produce barrels, there's technology such as carbon capture sequestration or carbon capture utilization and sequestration.”
“My husband, for example, it was right now in a drilling rig right now in a, in his rotation,” Pradhan said. “We're away from each other for a couple of weeks. So even though he gets to work half the year, I only get to see him half the year.”
At the end of the day, Pradhan completely understands the choices she has made that has brought her to West Texas and the Permian Basin in order to start the next chapter in her life.
“It's a great place to raise a family,” Pradhan said.
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