Michael Adam Schwarz - Production Engineer Lead at Extraction Oil and Gas
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EDUCATION:
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Knowing I wanted to follow in my dad’s footsteps and become an engineer, the next step was deciding what engineering discipline to pursue. After meeting with industry professionals as well as the petroleum engineering deans at The University of Texas and Texas A&M, I decided on petroleum engineering.
Being awarded the SPE-GCS Scholarship provided me the opportunity to secure an internship with Anadarko Petroleum before heading to UT. I worked in a reservoir/geology capacity for two offshore platforms. The following summer, I had a field internship in Colorado, again with Anadarko. Next, I interned with Apache Corporation in West Texas, where I built a base understanding of pumping units, electric submersible pumps, and their associated optimization of both systems. My last internship was with Anadarko as a Reservoir Engineer in Denver. Using the knowledge I gained from my previous internships, as well as a full year of major sequence classes, I determined their DJ Basin’s geographic order for drilling economic wells.
Upon graduating, I started a new adventure as a Production Engineer in Anadarko’s Evans field office in Colorado. I began my career in a foreman support role for mostly older vertical wells in the field. I then moved into a “safety prep engineer” role. After this program, I began a rotation as a wellsite supervisor for a workover rig. This experience was instrumental in my growth as an engineer. I then moved to Anadarko’s Denver office as a project manager. I led cross-disciplinary teams in efforts to improve processes and question how we had always done things. We were able to realize capital savings as well as cut out unnecessary steps and approvals.
In November 2016, I left Anadarko to become a Production Engineer for Extraction Oil and Gas, based in Denver. Because Extraction is a smaller company, I was responsible for all facets of production engineering. After a year in this role, I was promoted to the Production Engineering Lead. I am responsible for all of Extraction’s production, as well as three other production engineers. Over the past few months, I’ve learned about how to lead a team and accept responsibility for our group’s decisions and direction. It’s been a wild and exciting ride, and I thank SPE-GCS for getting it started with a scholarship to The University of Texas! Hook ‘em!