Production Engineer

Job Description

As part of the Operations team, the Production Engineering position based in Neuquén will report to the Surveillance Team Lead. This role will support Shell-operated ventures in Argentina (Sierras Blancas, Cruz de Lorena, Coirón Amargo Sur Oeste and Bajada de Añelo)

The Production Engineer will serve as the primary engineering resource for production surveillance and field operations support in their assigned area. They will focus on enhancing production, minimizing downtime, and maintaining high safety standards. The Production Engineer is expected to collaborate closely and proactively with the Surveillance team, Production Operations, Facilities Engineering, and the Wells and Development teams.

Accountabilities:

• Collaborate with an integrated team of operations staff, production engineers, reservoir engineers, and facilities engineers to safely maintain and maximize field production.
• Conduct well surveillance on over 100 Vaca Muerta Shell-operated developed wells and multiple water disposal wells. Identify, rank, plan, and support the execution of production optimization opportunities.
• Follow Asset Strategy to monitor and optimize artificial lift systems (Rod pump, Plunger lift, Velocity Strings and gas lift). Work with Senior engineer to design ALS.
• Provide production engineering support to well intervention activities. Track budget spend and performance against targets. Work with Senior engineer to propose and rank well intervention opportunities.
• Proactively contribute to the evergreen Production System Optimization (PSO) which includes annual review of WRFM Plan, update of surveillance activities, data acquisition, artificial lift recommendations, New Well choke policy.

Requirements

• Petroleum Engineer with over 5 years of relevant experience in production engineering or reservoir engineering with exposure to well surveillance methods, inflow-outflow relationships, and artificial lift optimization. Experience in unconventional plays and rod pumping systems is a plus.

• Able to produce and take ownership of high-quality technical work, with rigorous discipline to agreed cadence of optimization updates and clear and focused KPI’s.

• Basic skills in the application of production engineering tools for well & flow performance analysis (GAP, Prosper, Pipesim, XSPOC, SRod) and integrated production system modeling.
• Willingness to build digitalization skills within the Production engineering skillset: Digital skills and data science is a plus (matlab, spotfire, powerBI, python).
• Inquisitive nature, examining both Shell and external ways of working to implement best practices for well surveillance processes and methods.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills to work with the full range of multi-discipline technical staff.
• Native Spanish speaker with strong proficiency in English and ability to work with an international network team (Houston, Calgary, Buenos Aires, Neuquen)