Process control education for future electrical engineers in the oil and gas industry

The current trend towards automation in the Oil and Gas industry makes it essential for electrical engineers to have an understanding of the process dynamics in order to design the best system to control it. This paper aims to clarify the importance of process control education for electrical engineers and define the educational requirements. To achieve this goal, interviews with experts in the control departments of different industries were conducted with a focus on the Oil and Gas industry. In addition, an initiative to teach process control in the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi is evaluated and the students were surveyed. It was found that it requires a two semester course to teach process dynamics and control.