Pipeline or Flow Assurance Engineering

[sean77]

Hello Sathyan,

First of all, since i'm from a Mechanical Engineering background, people have been telling me to go into the main fields of Mechanical such as Static (Piping, Pressure Vessels etc) and Rotating (Turbines, Pump ,Compressors). However, I find that although there many jobs for these fields, i believe the market is too saturated as many people are going into these fields.

I see the future in subsea engineering. The questions i would like to ask are as follows:

1. First of all, can a Mechanical Engineer work as Flow Assurance engineer? Will my educational background be a limiting factor to how far i can achieve in FA? i have seen job advertisements for FA engineers stating requirement as Mechanical/Chemical/Petroleum.

2. I learnt that there are two different sides of Flow Assurance engineering. There are FA engineers in consultants/EPC contractors which deal with subsea pipeline construction such as TECHNIP etc. On the other hand, there are also FA engineers in upstream service companies such as Schlumberger, SPT Group etc. Are they all the same?

3. Are there many jobs for FA engineers as compared to other fields like pipeline/piping?

4. Lastly, is it advisable for a Mechanical Engineer to go into FA engineering instead of the main Mechanical field??

Thank you very much for taking time to guide me on this.

Cheers,
Sean