We’re confident that we have the best oil and gas industry-overview courses available anywhere. It’s our specialty. Our course materials have been custom developed over many years and are continuously being refined and updated to keep pace with industry developments. We make extensive use of photos, graphics, videos, animations and physical specimens. We also do question and answer sessions with electronic response cards and display group responses in real time. This allows us to reinforce key points and increases attendee engagement.

All course attendees receive a course binder with color copies of slides presented (two slides per page, 2 sided).

Our instructors are highly knowledgeable with executive-level experience in the industry. Our founder and managing director teaches many of our courses.

A well-organized program with dynamic visuals and a highly-competent instructor is important because it:

1. Improves learning and retention;
2. Allows more material to be covered in a given amount of time;
3. Allows greater depth of coverage in key areas by making complicated topics easier to understand; and
4. Is engaging and enjoyable, so that employees feel pleased rather bored or put-upon.

As a reflection of the above, in our most-popular course, our Upstream Oil and Gas course, we cover the following topics in just one day:

• The Structure of the Industry
• Geology and Exploration
• Mineral Rights and Leasing
• Drilling and Completion
• Development and Production Operations

That course is suitable for beginners but goes well beyond a typical introductory course and has plenty to offer to experienced employees as well. The course consistently gets excellent reviews. Our customers include some of the largest oil and gas companies in the industry and we would be happy to provide references.

We’re highly flexible. We’ll go anywhere and we adjust our program for each customer to best suit their operational, geographical and functional profile. We even adjust the course for different subsidiary locations of the same company. We also incorporate references to customer operations in the course to highlight the relevance of course topics.

You should check us out before hiring anyone else or before incurring the challenge and high cost of developing, presenting and maintaining your own program. We would be happy to show you what we do. If you are considering training a large volume of employees, we will conduct a free, full course for your evaluation team.

Our courses belong in the “what everyone should know and nobody knows it all” category. Essentially anyone will benefit, regardless of their function or experience level. Even people that have previously attended an industry fundamentals course will find our course worthwhile. We know because we have been told that many times by attendees that have taken other courses.

When we do courses for oil and gas companies, we don’t choose who attends the courses but a typical audience is about half newer employees and about half employees with at least a few years of experience, including some with decades of experience. Common comments from experienced employees are that they are thankful we filled in their knowledge gaps and wish they could have taken a course like ours earlier in their careers.

No prior experience is necessary for any of our courses, but we build up at a fairly brisk pace because we have a lot to cover in a limited amount of time, and we need to achieve a discussion level that keeps all attendees engaged. We are sometimes asked to do courses for groups of interns or new hires specifically and we usually dial back the pace and scope for those groups.

Oil and Gas Companies
We have observed employees from essentially all functions at our courses including IT, human resources, procurement, accounting/finance, auditing, risk management, legal, records management, regulatory, investor relations, land, division order and title analysts, geoscience, engineering, operations and administrative/executive assistants and interns.

We are sometimes requested to do courses for specific functional groups as IT, accounting or regulatory and we adjust the material to better address their functional needs. Demand for IT employee education has been on the rise because of the growing use of operational apps and we have done courses specifically for IT groups at several oil and gas companies (including more than 200 IT employees at one company).

Most of the attendees are office workers from headquarters or regional offices but companies sometimes send us to field offices. We think that makes sense because we’ve observed that field employees have a narrow company perspective and are eager to learn more. They sometimes comment about information that was immediately useful to them, such as allowing them to better understand surface owner disputes, regulatory requirements, or the purpose of certain tasks.

Industry Contractors and Suppliers
Our courses, or a customized variation of our courses, can be beneficial for a variety of contractor and supplier employees. Sales/marketing employees will particularly benefit because they can be more effective by better understanding how customers use their company’s products. Also, being conversant in industry topics can improve communication about customer activities and can draw out leads for other items in your company catalogue.

Accounting and Auditing Firms
It is all too common for internal and external auditors to be sent to job sites with very little advance knowledge of the subject matter. Our Oil and Gas for Accountants and Auditors course should be a mandatory starting point, particularly considering that the cost of the program is less than one day’s billing rate for an external auditor. You will enhance your company’s reputation, achieve better results and save your clients time if you use our services. Tax accountants will also benefit.

Oil and Gas  IT Professionals and Software Developers
There is a big influx of talent from outside the industry developing and promoting a wide range of software and equipment related to automated monitoring and control of oilfield operations as well as data capture, communication, and cloud-based storage, processing and analysis. Many aspects of these efforts require an understanding of the underlying operational processes. Our Oil and Gas for IT course is ideal for IT Professionals and Software Developers.

Our primary customers are oil and gas companies. We go wherever they send us, including headquarters and subsidiary locations, domestic and international. Our programs are great for meeting national-employee training obligations because everyone can benefit from the program, and a wide range of functional topics are covered while incurring the travel costs for only a single instructor.

We have also served a variety of other companies and institutions. Our courses are excellent for:

• Contractors and suppliers
• Law firms
• Accounting firms (CPE credit)
• Insurance providers
• Equity firms and banks
• Consultants
• Regulatory agencies
• Software companies
• Recruiters
• Educational institutions

We also do courses for the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) that are open for public enrollment (see tab for publicly available courses).

All of the following courses are available in a virtual instructor-led format using Microsoft Teams, Zoom or other streaming services. If desired, a course described as “one day” below may be split over multiple days if done virtually, usually at no extra cost. For example, we often conduct a “one-day” course over two days if done virtually, from 9:00-11:00 and 1:00-3:00 each day. We use a program called Wooclap to conduct interactive Q&A sessions and to monitor participation. Virtual courses attendees receive digital copies of slides rather than a hard-copy course binder.

Terms of Service for

Group Courses Provided to an Organization (“In House”)

Cancellation Policy
In the absence of separate agreement, the following cancellation policy shall apply:
For group live courses, there shall be no cancellation charge if notice of cancellation is received at least 7 calendar days prior to the scheduled course date. Thereafter, a cancellation charge equal to 40% of the base course rate shall be due.

For group internet-based (virtual) courses, there shall be no cancellation charge if notice of cancellation is received at least 3 calendar days prior to the scheduled course date. Thereafter, a cancellation charge equal to 20% of the base course rate shall be due.

If a formal written agreement is executed, the agreement shall be deemed to address the cancellation policy in its entirety (whether or not specifically mentioned) and the terms stated above shall not apply.

Complaint Resolution
Anyone with a complaint about any aspect of our business or our refund or cancellation policies should contact Brandon Muzny at support@energy-train.com.