A Day in the Life of a Production Engineer
Topics: Natural Gas CompressionCareers in Oil and Gas
A Well That Went From 30 Barrels a Day to 60 or 80
Cameron Bayne’s operator ran a pilot test in February on a well that was not its best producer. It was already making a lot of water, which made it a reasonable candidate to find out whether a treatment would work without risking a good well. It worked. The well went from roughly 30 barrels a day to 60 to 80, and Bayne, a production engineer in California, calls it a huge success.
That pilot is part of a matrix stimulation program his company has started. The driver is regulatory as much as geological. Bayne describes the regulatory environment in California as hostile, and says the company has to stay inside compliance while routing work through applications for jobs that fall under certain volume thresholds and are not permitted work. The objective is increasing incremental production.
Three Engineers, Twenty Employees, and a Daily Cost Audit
Bayne does not work at a large company. He describes his employer as a very small operator — about three working engineers and roughly 20 employees. At that size, he says, everyone is critical to the company’s success.
His day starts with daily reports. He audits them for cost, checks whether a job came in over budget, and asks why. If something went over, can it be engineered out next time, or is it simply a cost of doing business in oil? On wells making four or five barrels a day, a $2,000 budget miss matters. He also looks ahead at the rig schedule, decides what work needs to get back to a well, and reviews whether the operation is set up correctly and whether the pump design is right.
He goes to the field often, in part to have a presence and let people know their work is seen. At a company that small, everything crosses your desk — vendors pitching a new product, small problems, the daily business of a handful of wells. Figuring it out, he says, is what makes the job fun.
On the lift side, the company runs compressors and pumps, sucker rod and cavity pumps. Years ago, one of its fields ran plunger lift. Today it is sucker rod pumps.
Hydrochloric Acid, Xylene, and Fifty-Year-Old Well Files
On the production improvement work, Bayne says the chemistry is mainly hydrochloric acid with a corrosion inhibitor, plus xylene at 10% and 17%. They have dabbled with hydrofluoric acid, but he has seen good results from a small amount of hydrochloric acid and xylene.
California’s advantage, he says, is that the wells are old. Companies have operated in the field for over a hundred years, and if you have the time to go through well files that are 50 or 60 years old, you can find out what was tried and what worked. Decline has dropped drastically over the last 30 to 40 years. He concedes the records are good most of the time, with the occasional gap.
Setbacks, Permits, and Trying to Survive
The regulatory squeeze shows up in the field. Bayne points to a 300-foot setback and the fact that there are effectively no new well permits in their area — exceptions here and there, but not enough to plan around.
“We have basically been just trying to survive without being able to work on the wells properly,” he says.
The workaround has narrowed to acid. He describes treatments being limited to what can be done under specified volumes, which puts a premium on meeting regulation and doing it cost effectively.
Asked what production enhancement means to him, he answers in two parts: increasing incremental production, or flattening the decline curve. Flattening the curve is the piece he thinks gets forgotten. If you can hold a decline flat, you have brought value to the company.
What the Service Side Doesn’t See
Bayne traces his start to a magazine article about an oil crisis and an engineering shortage, and to Colorado School of Mines. He graduated into a downturn and had about six months before the rug got pulled out from under him. He went back to work in 2016 and 2017, spent five years in the service field, moved from service into an office, and eventually came back to California as a production engineer.
The difference between the two worlds, as he describes it, is where your attention lives. On the service side, once the job was over, the well was out of mind — the focus was job execution and whether it was done to the customer’s request. On the operator side, the well stays on your mind: how it performs afterward, and what the outcome means for production. The operator role also gives an engineer more room to try things.
Coming from service, he carried one lesson with him. People in the office do not always have an accurate sense of what a job takes in the field. They expect work to be performed a certain way because they do not realize what it means physically.
For students heading into oil and gas, his advice is blunt. “Don’t get so hung up on the idea of having a specific job title or a specific role.” Chasing a preconceived notion of your career can cost you other opportunities. The oil industry is a very large industry, he says — when he was graduating, everyone went to an operator; now the regulatory side and the federal government are spokes on the same wheel. His instruction is to explore everything, talk with everyone, and be humble.
And listen more than you talk. “We have two ears, one mouth, use it to that ratio.”
Terms explained in this episode
Full transcript · 3,846 words
Machine-generated transcript of “A Day in the Life of a Production Engineer”. Paragraph breaks mark a change of speaker. Click a timestamp to play from that point.
0:00 Good morning. You've got David Apshire here on Under Pressure Podcast. We've got Cameron Bain, who's a petroleum engineer out of California that we're going to be visiting with this morning. Cameron, thank you for joining us this morning on the podcast.
0:14 Thanks for having me out.
0:16 Absolutely. Can you walk us through your background and how you ended up where you are today in oil and gas? Yeah, absolutely.
0:23 So we take back 2011. I just tried to call mine and uh decide where you go. And I don't remember the article, but I read a magazine article called the New York Oil Crisis and Engineering Shortage. And it was a quick form of digital cited Paul Ross. And I think that's a sign that hey, you should do this. You're at a great school for it for it. Depending on who you ask number one, one, two, but it's always always the top spot. Um graduate and oil, oil, boy, the industry industry certainly certainly changed right. Um I've had about six months before the rug got pulled out from under me. Um I went back to work uh in 2016, 2017 as I had tracked training field and I worked in. I worked in the service field for five to five years. Then I then moved out the service service into an off-in office and eventually came back to California as a production engineer. Nice it's been on a wild ride with you know a couple down turns and COVID and everything, but it's it's I've learned a lot of people and I wouldn't change ages. Except for except for COVID.
2:22 Right, absolutely. I I completely understand that. It sounds like you've had quite the ride. Now, the Colorado School of Mines, that's really very impressive. Uh, that's a great, great college. I hear nothing but good things of folks that come out of that. So I mean, that's that's a really, really cool story, too, to listen on how you kind of evolved into declaring your major and you know, just from an article that you read. And I visited with the engineer yesterday, and he had a very similar story. His was uh he's actually someone that had never had any family in oil and gas or anything like that. So it was all on his own and his own thinking, and of course, too, just by stuff that he had read and surrounded those you know, decisions, so which is super cool. So, what's your current role and what's a normal day look like look like for you right now?
3:14 So he would call me a production engineer, okay, production operation. You know, jargon didn't get back to back. But I'll start with saying I don't work at traditional company. I work very small, very small operator. I'll give you a lot of people. I'll give you some idea about three working engineers, um 13 barrels a day a day, and 20 employees. So you and we are on our very small side. Um that you know that that's high visibility. If you're doing it, or if you're not but but on the upside, everyone else is critical to the company's success. Uh there is no very fast. But normal for me would be just making sure daily daily rights reports. Uh basically auditing them for costs. Basically, basically, is it bubble budget budget budget? If it's just why is something avoid in the future, is it can we engineer the budget out part out in the future? Or is it just controlled? That's unfortunate part of being an oil. And if it is, it is overbudgeting. You know, even if even if it's very, very, very small. Uh well, wells, four, four, five, five barrels of bill a day. When you have $2,000 budget budget on the job, that we matters. I'll be often looking ahead in the rig schedule. Are there any issues that we should do that we need to get back to the well make sense? I mean, is it is it is it clearly far away, far away time.
5:14 Those things matter and decide where the road goes and motion, motion and economy.
5:21 And then programs themselves.
5:26 Does the order operation stand up set up? Do we need pump design design, APA design design?
5:33 Just generally the best way that it can be. And I try to make it better. If the answer is the answer is no.
5:39 Absolutely. Well, I completely understand. It sounds like you've got a lot of responsibility, and I do, I do definitely understand the smaller operation side of things where every person counts and it's very viable to keeping everything running smoothly, which I'm definitely, definitely used to for sure. Now, what are your responsibilities for to keep everything running day-to-day? Like, do you do a lot of remote monitoring or is everything very much hands-on kind of stuff, or uh is it manual charts or kind of uh on your day-to-day on your personal responsibilities to make sure everything's running smoothly?
6:17 So a lot of my day-to-day responsibilities, but I just talked about the overseeing costs, maintaining line communication. I will go field quite often just to have a presence. Let it let everyone let everyone know. People like to learn that.
6:35 Absolutely.
6:41 Let people know that their hard work and efforts are being pushed. Sometimes you don't feel like that way. But but uh and then take take care of everything in the needs that be taken care of. Remember, we're only wrong with people, or three engineers need to take thumbs up, whether it be cow town people or new vendors want to come in and finish their new product or a ton of small things that will cross drop your desk when you're out of your company. And and it's up to you to you to figure it out. And you do it, and that's what that's what makes it fun.
7:23 Absolutely. Yeah, you you sound a lot like me with uh you know just being able to do a little bit of everything and of course too trying to keep up with everything and monitoring and just making sure everything's moving smoothly. And I I think you hit the nail on the head, you know, everybody wants to hear they're doing a good job, right? Like that's the right thing to do. Everybody's putting in tons of work, lots of times that work goes unnoticed, especially in the oil and gas business, right? Like it just unfortunately it does, and I I commend you for that for sure. What what kind of projects are you overseeing right now?
7:57 So as of right wheel, my company has started started uh an ass an account, a matrix simulation program. You'll you know working in California in the regular regulatory environment is hostile.
8:14 They don't want us just to succeed.
8:20 No one otherwise. So we have to do things that are within uh regulatory compliance and then through one of one of those applications that that are under certain volume are not permitted work. And and they and then increase incremental incremental production. That's what we're going to go with. Increase incremental incremental production. And yeah, we know we just about early March of last year's year. Excuse me, February. We did a pilot pilot test on a well that wasn't necessarily the best producer, but also knowing that we're still in a bunch of water.
9:06 We would be losing a great well. So we saw that we worked on that.
9:15 And then easing our way to getting in some of our prize prize extraction. It was a 30 barrel very well, well, we backed 60 to 80 barrel very well. So that's that's that's that's a that's a huge success.
9:34 Absolutely. Now, with a lot of the regulation, like you said, I I completely agree. In California, I know it's been hard on the industry to operate and maintain and try to stay profitable with all the regulations that's been put in place over the years. So I I commend you guys for you know staying at it and staying productive, and of course, too, keeping everything flowing and you know being able to go back and do you know production improvement programs so that way, of course, too, you're able to slowly be able to bring in some more production online without having to spend all that capital money to you know go in and drill a new well. So that's super cool. Now, on your guys' side, uh with the acid, do you guys ever use uh any kind of soaps or do you just mainly acid uh when you're going in on these production improvement projects?
10:22 So we will use like a little bit of it it's mainly hydrochloric acid, xyane corrosion. Um we have a lot of auto production of uh pump 10%, 17% xylene. Um, and we've we've dabbled HF4, but uh we've seen pretty good success in just using a little bit of a hydro, maybe half sense back then and then roaders and xylene.
11:04 Yeah, that's that's super, super cool.
11:07 Now, what one of the benefits to working in California is all these wells are super old. And there have been companies operating in this field for over a hundred years and a lot of tribe. And if you have time and power to go through well files that are literally 50, 60 years old, you can find out what they've done, what kind of worked, and maybe for you again again, despite resignation discharge drastically the last last 30, 30, 40 years.
11:42 Yeah, absolutely. That's that's super cool. And I think I think the big thing is is you know, from your gospel, anything you can do to look back and see what the guys before you guys done, you know, it's just smart business, right? It's gonna tell you a story, it's gonna give you production reports, it's gonna let you know what was working, what wasn't working. That's super, super smart way uh to look at your operations. Lots of times what I've seen in the past, you don't have good records, so it's very mixed results, and you know, it's generally trying to figure that out. So that's great that you guys have got good records on that as well.
12:15 Um I will say most of the time you got good records. There are the the the the occasional man.
12:26 I get it completely. So working in California uh in the oil and gas business, how does that, you know, how does that approach change, you know, the way you guys operate your production, like limits and you know, things like that and constraints that the state puts on y'all?
12:43 So uh I guess you know, you know, now with the way things are going with uh S DO 37, that that right there is the uh uh made it to where our well didn't work on work on because the setback is 300 feet, no new lookover permits permits.
13:06 Really no new well well permits in that area area. There might be exceptions here and there and there. Um but we have basically been just trying to survive without being able to work on the well wells properly properly.
13:21 Usually there's inside track track. But now it's basically narrowed narrow to add to acid.
13:30 Uh at a s at a under specified by the stimulated. But but so yeah, yeah, we have to focus this on meeting deregulation and doing it cost effectively.
13:44 Absolutely. So on your in your world, what is you know what does production enhancement actually mean to you when you think about production enhancement?
13:53 I I I think I think I said earlier with increasing incremental production production. Um or even flat flattened decline curve.
14:03 Absolutely. So if we can flatten the decline climb curve, bring bring value company, I say, look, I did it. That's definitely always something that lots of people forget about that decline curve and you know being able to stop it or slow it down. So much old production we all know has a tendency to just slowly decline to where obviously it's not cost effective to operate the production. So I think we'll even looking at that as smart. Lots of companies don't look at that until it's too late, uh, and then it's you know went too far the other direction. So what's the what's the biggest challenge of working at a a small company?
14:48 I think the lack of actually budget to try like the way integrated stuff.
14:55 But also at the same time that that comes with a lot of benefits of working in a small, small company.
15:06 I can I can go straight to the print and then go straight straight to the CEO. And it's and it's a very, very quick process. So your successors are extremely visible, but failure.
15:19 Yeah, that's a that's a great way to look at that too, because I I definitely agree, because when when you don't have a lot of management in play, I mean everybody knows everything, right? And so the successors are great, and then when you have the mistakes, of course, they're obviously visible for everybody as well. So it looks like you know, with your experience from the service side and the operator side, what's the biggest difference between those two worlds that you've seen?
15:52 On the service side, I was working.
15:56 And then once the job was over, we're gonna go back to the back of the phone and that well, I thought about it again again. On the operator side, once we're working on well that well is going to be on the on-minded, like how it forms after. So you go on the side you focus on job job execution. Was it done as per customer requests? On the operator side you were outcome as it pertaining to production. And then it's kind of a little more on mind when you kind of come to deciding what do LEO and when you're on your service side side, it's customer. So you space basically doing that exactly. Sometimes your inputs doesn't change. That was that was my experience. And now I kind of test my areas and see if it works out. It's a little bit more for an engineer to be given a little bit of control.
16:53 Absolutely. Well, I think I think too, that's one of the great things about being on the production side versus the service side. I think that's very well said. It's just you're in it for the long run, and the service company usually comes in for a short amount of time, and lots of times they're restricted on what they're able to do or not do. And then from your engineering perspective to say, hey, I'm gonna be here for you know, for as long as I'm in this position and I'm gonna own this and take responsibility and be able to try new things to, you know, try to improve production, whether it's you know, decreasing pressure or increasing, you know, soap jobs or acid jobs or different things like that, or you know, just how you run certain things, certain times of the day, different things like that, you know, setting pumps and timers and compressors and all the cool stuff that go along with it. So I completely agree. So what what skills or mindset do you feel like helped you most in transitioning into like a operations engineering role?
17:54 A lot of the times when I was on the side, I thought a lot of times the off the office understand accurate time timetables. They expect to perform certain jobs in a certain way existed only because they didn't realize necessarily kind of what that meant meant physically. There was a lot of you know that sometimes they they they see a 48 hour pad swap swap failure failure when in all reality that was actually actually a gas job, how much how much of it, how far to go other conditions, yada yada yada. So I coming in to my job job, I understand that maybe everyone's ones work into their ability as is.
18:42 Absolutely. Now, as far as uh students who are wanting to work in the oil and gas industry, what's one thing that they should understand about real-world operations, from your opinion?
18:53 Well well I'll tell them what not not to do, and I'm speaking from experience. Don't get so hung up on the idea of having a specific job title or a specific role. And and be so focused that you're giving up other great opportunities because you're chasing this like this idea, you have a preconceived notion of what your career would look like. The oil industry is a very, very large industry. For instance, you know, when I was graduating, everyone goes to an auto-operator. And now it's basically regulatory, the federal government, there is all kinds of spokes in the wheel, gas industry. And everyone focuses on every spoke, not just one high focus. Because it can put you on the wrong reason. You're up with that job, you can take it, it'll be bad for your performance. Explore everything. And then I understand that in the real real world, it's not always how you learn. There's a lot of side factors. Um I heard it kind of is we have two ears, one mouth, use it to that ratio. Listen to twice, especially when they're new. And and I and I still try to try to listen way more than I than I because that's how you try to learn, talk with everyone and and uh and and then uh be humble.
20:41 Yep, absolutely. Well, Cameron, I th I think you hit the nail on the head. You know, one of the one of the things that I've seen, especially with young engineers coming out of college, you know, they get hung up on those job titles, right? And not knowing, you know, which which part of the industry that they want to work in or they're gonna enjoy. And I definitely, definitely encourage them, just like you said, you know, to be open-minded and not let titles hold you up on making decisions. And sometimes, you know, being able to go work in a regulatory position for a little while to get good experience on that side of it to understand things, uh, which is great. And then of course too, uh just being open-minded to what position it is going to be with that degree that you can apply applicable things and be able to learn different parts of the industry. Because there is a lot of spokes, like you said, that make up the wheel for sure in the oil and gas business. And you know, that that's one thing that I've learned over my career as well. Coming in on the service side and and being parts of the production side and and being able to see all the moving pieces and you get in the midstream, and then you get into the refining, and you just see so many different parts of the industry where you think a petroleum engineer or a mechanical engineer or anybody with those certain skill sets where they can just fall into these roles really easily. And uh, you know, I've met several petroleum engineers that have been project managers for large operators and have these different titles. So as you see our industry evolve, which it's gonna continue to evolve, and the petroleum engineers, the mechanical engineers will be able to follow suit and create you know new roles and new titles to be successful and to be open-minded. And I'm super, super thankful for folks like yourself that have jumped in and been part of the industry, and of course to being able to navigate the storms that we all go through with this industry, the ups and downs, it's extremely hard. Uh, you know, anybody that's been in the oil and gas business always tell everybody you have to go in understanding that there is volatility in the market and know when it's good, it's good, and when it's bad, it's bad. But the one thing I will say, the folks that, you know, obviously are able to weather the storm and understand the market conditions, understand the roles and responsibilities that buckle down, make changes, transition, move on to other projects, generally have a long, long, successful career. So, anyways, Cameron, I I definitely appreciate you being able to jump on today and visit with me, buddy. One other question, just real quick before we jump off. Do you guys use any kind of uh uh uplift equipment like uh compressors or pumps or uh anything like that on your side of production at the small company?
23:30 Uh yeah, we have definitely compressors, kind of pump pumps. Sucker rod, rhymes. The company cavity rooms and then uh years ago one of the field deals on plunger, but it's it's it's basically all just sucker rod, rond pump.
23:53 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I always like to ask everybody that because you know the different kinds of equipment that we have out there to of course determine, you know, obviously the life of the well, right? So it's like you mentioned getting away from plunger lift on some of that stuff. And I hear people all the time that talk about things that they used to do and where they're headed at today to keep the wells alive, right? Which is extremely important, especially to especially to stay profitable for sure in our industry in today's market. Well, Cameron, I definitely appreciate you jumping on today uh for being on the podcast. One of the things we're gonna do, uh we're gonna send you some Midwestern Presser swag. Uh so if you can just reply to the email uh that I sent you and give me an address, a mailing address, and I'll have the girls in the office get some stuff and get it sent out to you. And once again, I want to thank you sincerely for jumping on and visiting with us today and of course being part of the podcast, being part of the oil and gas industry, and just being a great person sounds like I'm super thankful to be able to meet you today and of course spend some time with you on the podcast. And I look forward to talking to you soon, buddy. Absolutely my first podcast. Awesome. Well, you did great. Yeah, you did great. So thank you so much for it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you have a great weekend, buddy, and we'll talk to you soon. You too.
25:08 Bye bye. Bye bye.
25:09 Bye bye.