Subsea engineering is a multidisciplinary field that builds on traditional engineering knowledge. Texas A&M University subsea engineering students will broaden their engineering skills. You will learn about the economic and operational drivers critical to designing, selecting and configuring subsea systems. You will also learn about subsea project management and execution, including experience-based lessons.
All students in this program take courses covering subsea engineering fundamentals. You may select from courses covering subsea hardware, subsea controls and umbilical systems, subsea riser systems, flowlines, pipelines and their installation to build your own degree plan.
The guiding premise of this degree program is to provide practical knowledge of the subsea engineering discipline from actual experiences. The courses are taught by instructors who built their qualifications through industry experience gained from working careers in the oil and gas industry. These professors of practice had successful careers of their own prior to becoming instructors.
What is Subsea Engineering?
Subsea engineering is a multidisciplinary field that is broadly responsible for the design, construction, installation and operation of offshore oil and gas fields and offshore wind farms. Expertise or understanding of the many engineering disciplines needed to develop these offshore fields is required. The scope of this engineering field includes all subsea hardware, operational control, umbilicals, pipelines, power cables and interfaces with host production facilities.
Subsea engineering is challenging because systems must operate without failing in remote locations hundreds of kilometers offshore, where equipment is operated remotely from many kilometers away, in extreme water depths with tremendous pressures externally and internally, in a very corrosive environment where temperatures range from extremely low to extremely high.
What Does a Subsea Engineer Do?
Typical subsea engineering jobs are commonly centered on the following areas: (1) specialty hardware design, fabrication and installation of subsea equipment; (2) project management that enables on-time delivery and startup of subsea equipment; (3) detailed technical modeling and design of subsea systems and components; (4) subsea production operations, interventions, deep-water repairs, system troubleshooting and directing onsite activities from offshore locations.
Where Do Subsea Engineers Work?
Subsea engineers are typically based in an office location with frequent, and sometimes extended, visits to fabrication, manufacturing, installation and offshore operation sites. Subsea engineers occasionally work in international locations and other frontier areas. A subsea engineer can expect to work in a variety of different geographic areas during their career.
Why Study Subsea Engineering at Texas A&M University?
The subsea engineering master’s degree program builds upon the Texas A&M academic legacy in all areas of engineering. Texas A&M has a wide variety of unique resources, such as the Offshore Technology Research Center, and deep-water scientific expertise.
The subsea engineering master’s degree program is able to leverage a strong historical collaboration between Texas A&M and industry. Texas A&M’s advanced learning technologies and training methods are expected to help make subsea engineers from Texas A&M highly sought after for industry employment. Finally, alumni of this program join the highly connected aggie support network.