Like everyone's job I'm sure, it is hard to describe in a couple of sentences. I've been at BP for 28 years and during all those years I have worked on one "Super Giant" oil field, Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope of Alaska. It is the largest oil field in North America and twice as large as the next biggest field in east Texas. There are six huge oil processing facilities on the Slope at Prudhoe and the world's largest gas plant. My first 10 years were spent on commercial work, primarily disputes between the State of Alaska which owns the leases and the oil companies and an early attempt to commercialize the Prudhoe gas resource with an LNG project.
For the past 18 years I've been doing the production accounting for Prudhoe. So I keep track of all the oil, water and gas production and injection from about 1,500 wells, 6 processing facilities and 2 gas plants and then prepare all the monthly reports for the regulatory agencies and the oil companies, so everyone can book their revenue and pay the royalty and taxes due on the production. To do that, I'm regularly in touch with the plant operators on the Slope, the automation engineers, the petroleum, drilling and reservoir engineers and commercial groups, plus the co-owners and the Alaska regulatory agencies. It's been a fascinating job and one I have never tired of doing. For a guy who left college with a BA degree in philosophy 40 years ago and virtually no job prospects, my working life has gone in a direction I never would have expected.
When I told my wife 18 years ago that my job had changed and I was now going to be the Prudhoe "volume accountant", she was doubtful that I could do it. When I asked her why, she gave me two reasons: 1) I'm not a "real accountant" (she is) and 2) I'm "terrible at volumes". I asked what she meant about point 2. According to her, I could never pick the right size container to put any leftover food in. I was apparently always picking a container that was either too small or too large. After a few days on the new job, I was able to reassure her that this would not be a problem....I didn't have to fill the barrels of oil, just count them on a computer screen. I've been happily doing it ever since.
Gary
http://petrowiki.org/Prudhoe_Bay_field