Job Check
Petroleum Engineers
Devise methods to improve oil and gas extraction and production and determine the need for new or modified tool designs. Oversee drilling and offer technical advice.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Specify and supervise well modification and stimulation programs to maximize oil and gas recovery.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 02Monitor production rates, and plan rework processes to improve production.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 03Maintain records of drilling and production operations.AI could speed this up a lot
- 04Analyze data to recommend placement of wells and supplementary processes to enhance production.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 05Assist engineering and other personnel to solve operating problems.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 06Direct and monitor the completion and evaluation of wells, well testing, or well surveys.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 07Develop plans for oil and gas field drilling, and for product recovery and treatment.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 08Assess costs and estimate the production capabilities and economic value of oil and gas wells, to evaluate the economic viability of potential drilling sites.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 09Confer with scientific, engineering, and technical personnel to resolve design, research, and testing problems.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 10Interpret drilling and testing information for personnel.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
Tasks from O*NET® 31.0 (US Department of Labor, CC BY 4.0, changed by us), most important first. “Already use” comes from Anthropic’s data on real work chats with Claude; “could speed up” from task ratings made with GPT-4 in 2023.
Four studies, side by side
None is a forecast of job lossToo little dataNot enough work use was seen to measure. This does not mean the job is safe from AI.Anthropic, 2026
53%of this job’s tasks an AI model could do in half the time, counting tasks that need extra tools as half (rated in 2023).Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin and Rock, 2023
Above 68% of jobsin how often and how well AI helped with this job’s work in Microsoft Copilot chats (2024 data).Microsoft Research (Tomlinson et al.), 2025
Your human edge
AI touches every main task of this job in some way. Your edge is judgment: knowing when AI’s work is right, and checking it before it counts.