Petroleum Engineer

Summary

You will serve as a Petroleum Engineer with the Orphan Wells Program Office (OWPO). This is a temporary promotion and/or detail not to exceed 4 years. This position may be physically located in any DOI office, and will be negotiated after selection. The salary listed in the announcement is at the Rest of the United States (RUS) level. The geographical locality pay will be determined at the time of selection. First time hires to the Federal government normally start at the step 1 rate.

Duties

Some of the major duties you will perform include but are not limited to the following: Leads and advises a multidisciplinary team to carry out field inspections and desk audits of grant recipient plugging activities, processes, and procedures. Provides expert advice and support to achieve sound plugging practices and sustainable plugging of orphaned wells in accordance with grant awards and federal project terms and conditions. Reviews and provides technical advice on well plugging plans, surface, and subsurface liabilities, and environmental remediation techniques associated well plugging activities. Evaluates and provides oversight of the reclamation and remediation of plugged well sites. Ensures wells are plugged in accordance with applicable environmental laws and regulations to protect groundwater, other natural resources, public health and safety, and the environment. Serves as a lead and technical expert to a multidisciplinary team consisting of environmental engineers, petroleum engineers, natural resource specialists, physical scientists, and other specialists. Analyzes and interprets well plugging engineering data, reviews plugging standards and procedures, and monitors activities related to financial assistance awards and federal projects. Evaluates and advises on the adequacy of the Department's methane measurement protocols and techniques. Develops and contributes to writing high-level technical documents and providing feedback to applicable parts of the Orphan Wells Program Office (OWPO) national financial assistance program. Conducts critical assessments and reviews of applications for grant funding, grantee programmatic reports, and technical papers. Organizes work, sets priorities, and determines resource requirements; determines short- or long-term goals and strategies; and coordinates work efforts with other OWPO Divisions and external organizations as appropriate. Provides authoritative support to the Division Chief on the technical aspects of well plugging, lease bonding, and transfer of liabilities related to reducing the orphaned well burden, idle well plan evaluations, and other mission critical technical assessments. Reviews the collection of orphaned, idle, and temporarily abandonment well data for the purposes of developing data models to predict future orphaned well liabilities.

Qualifications

All qualifications must be met by the closing date of this announcement - 10/27/2026-unless otherwise stated in this vacancy announcement. Competitive candidates must also meet Time-in-Grade requirements as defined in 5 CFR 300, Subpart F. For current Federal employees, if hours worked per week are not included on your resume, you must submit a non-award SF-50 as part of your application to be used to validate your work schedule and determine the amount of specialized experience that you will be granted. An award SF-50 will not be acceptable documentation for which to consider your amount of qualifying experience. For periods of time that reflect military service, the DD-214 or Statement of Service is sufficient to meet the work schedule requirement as the service dates will be reflected. For all other applicants who are not current federal employees, your resume must state either "full-time" (or "40 hours a week") or "part-time" with the number of hours worked per week to ensure proper crediting of specialized experience. Selective Placement Factors: This position requires a special qualification that has been determined to be essential to perform the duties and will be used as a screen out element. If you do not provide evidence that you possess the following selective factor(s), you will be rated not qualified. 1) Must possess and maintain a valid state driver's license while employed in this position. -AND- Minimum Qualification Requirements: To qualify for this position, you must meet the following minimum qualifications: Basic Educational Requirements: In addition to the specialized experience requirements for this position, you must meet at least one of the following: A. Degree: Engineering. To be acceptable, the program must: (1) lead to a bachelor's degree in a school of engineering with at least one program accredited by ABET; or (2) include differential and integral calculus and courses (more advanced than first-year physics and chemistry) in five of the following seven areas of engineering science or physics: (a) statics, dynamics; (b) strength of materials (stress-strain relationships); (c) fluid mechanics, hydraulics; (d) thermodynamics; (e) electrical fields and circuits; (f) nature and properties of materials (relating particle and aggregate structure to properties); and (g) any other comparable area of fundamental engineering science or physics, such as optics, heat transfer, soil mechanics, or electronics. You must submit transcripts. -OR- B. Combination of education and experience: college-level education, training, and/or technical experience that furnished (1) a thorough knowledge of the physical and mathematical sciences underlying engineering, and (2) a good understanding, both theoretical and practical, of the engineering sciences and techniques and their applications to one of the branches of engineering. The adequacy of such background must be demonstrated by one of the following: 1. Professional registration or licensure -- Current registration as an Engineer Intern (EI), Engineer in Training (EIT)1, or licensure as a Professional Engineer (PE) by any State, the District of Columbia, Guam, or Puerto Rico. Absent other means of qualifying under this standard, those applicants who achieved such registration by means other than written test (e.g., State grandfather or eminence provisions) are eligible only for positions that are within or closely related to the specialty field of their registration. For example, an applicant who attains registration through a State Board's eminence provision as a manufacturing engineer typically would be rated eligible only for manufacturing engineering positions. 2. Written Test -- Evidence of having successfully passed the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE)2 examination or any other written test required for professional registration by an engineering licensure board in the various States, the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico. 3. Specified academic courses -- Successful completion of at least 60 semester hours of courses in the physical, mathematical, and engineering sciences and that included the courses specified in the basic requirements under paragraph A. The courses must be fully acceptable toward meeting the requirements of an engineering program as described in paragraph A. 4. Related curriculum -- Successful completion of a curriculum leading to a bachelor's degree in an appropriate scientific field, e.g., engineering technology, physics, chemistry, architecture, computer science, mathematics, hydrology, or geology, may be accepted in lieu of a bachelor's degree in engineering, provided the applicant has had at least 1 year of professional engineering experience acquired under professional engineering supervision and guidance. Ordinarily there should be either an established plan of intensive training to develop professional engineering competence, or several years of prior professional engineering-type experience, e.g., in interdisciplinary positions. (The above examples of related curricula are not all inclusive.) Specialized Experience: To qualify for