In a recent chat with Trevor Snapp, a Drilling Engineer Advisor II at H&P, he shared the story of his career path from a part-time gig during high school to his current role on the Advanced Well Engineering (AWE) team.
Snapp got his foot in the door at H&P back in 2018 through the FlexRig Machinery Center (FMC). Looking back, he noted, “Joel Shibley played a big role in helping me secure a field internship and get into the larger H&P company.”
His journey continued with a field internship on Rig 641 in West Texas, where he learned the ropes of drilling operations.
“Rig 641 was one of the newest Flex 3 skid rigs H&P deployed at the time,” he added. “Not only did I learn a lot about the rig, but I met some great people in the field that I keep in touch with to this day.”
After graduating from the University of Kansas, Snapp returned to H&P, spending four years with the performance engineering group before joining the AWE team last year. On his time with the performance engineering group, Snapp said, “I enjoyed the projects and made connections with the team, many of whom are still good friends.”
His family has several engineers and he always looked up to his grandfather who was an engineer for Conoco. He attributes his grandfather to introducing him to the world of oil and gas engineering.
In his current role as a drilling engineer advisor with the AWE team, Snapp shared, “We use the well scan software suite to address rig issues, provide real-time support and improve drilling operations for our customers. The work is diverse — one day you're troubleshooting one thing, the next day it's something completely different.”
Anytime a rig has a problem, the AWE team is called up to address drilling, tripping, running casing issues which can be looked at with the team’s software. Snapp said it takes a big team to keep H&P rigs running at top performance with problem solving happening in real time.
“A lot of times we provide recommendations and roadmaps to improve drilling operations which our customers appreciate,” he said. “As our team does better the customers see the benefit and H&P is better as a whole.”
Snapp acknowledged mentors who guided him along the way, including Joel Shibley, Cori Nell and Michael Wallingford.
Looking ahead, Snapp expressed interest in exploring opportunities related to technology and engineering within H&P, saying, “Whether that's managing a tech team or being hands-on in testing and development, I'm interested in contributing to that part of our company.”