Paper: Tapping The Bicameral Mind A New Approach For Petroleum Engineering Management

The petroleum industry has had to curtail incoming manpower in the last few years due to a changing economic landscape. This change has made optimal use of engineering resources imperative. The optimization need not cause major upheavals within the industry. A shift in managerial thinking and a strategic integration of engineers and engineering managers into functional syndicates will aid in tapping the engineering energy and expertise present in an organization. The human brain processes information in several ways. Individually, these brain processing patterns determine how a person perceives and processes information. If the various processing mechanisms are drawn together, a powerful decision-making/problem-solving entity is formed. The discipline of petroleum engineering possesses within it areas of expertise that require different information processing mechanisms. All of these areas require, to a degree, the linear, exacting method of problem-solving common to all forms of engineering. Further differences exist, however, between the various functions of petroleum engineering. A reservoir engineer must have the ability to see a geologic structure thousands of feet below the earth's surface and envision the ebb and flow of fluids within the porous rock. A production engineer is required to monitor the operation of pumping units, tank batteries, and similar equipment in order to optimize well productivity. In many engineers, these functions overlap, but both functions require separate information processing systems. The reservoir engineer must access his spatial, or analog, system, and the production engineer must access his mechanical, or digitai, system. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a sample of petroleum engineers to determine the presence or absence of definitive information processing patterns within assigned functional classifications. The results of this study could provide petroleum engineering managers a means of tailoring engineering teams to work with optimal effectiveness both together and separately. The concept may further be extended to the management of a company by choosing managers to operate in particular capacities according to their information processing and managerial styles. The identification of brain dominance patterns may become invaluable in the strategic development of companies over the long term by providing a method to optimize the resource of engineering expertise available.