I spent Summer 2024 as a Mechanical and Process Engineering Intern for Laramie Energy. Laramie is an exploration and production (E&P) natural gas company with primarily upstream and some midstream elements. Laramie Energy’s operations are concentrated in the Piceance Basin of western Colorado. I worked primarily at the headquarters in Denver, CO but also spent some time in the field.
My largest contribution to Laramie was a computer program that I designed and developed to massively reduce calculation time for various pipeline considerations. I conceived the need for this project after working on a pipeline selection early on in my internship. One key tool that my boss, Laramie’s Facilities Engineering Manager, was using for projects like this was a spreadsheet he had created many years ago. Spreadsheet entry of key parameters was very slow, especially when multiple pipes were in consideration and multiple iterations of the spreadsheet were necessary.
I set upon automating the spreadsheet calculation and other pipeline/pump calculations via programming. I decided to use Python due to previous experience, and employed a few libraries. I used Kivy for my GUI as it is an open-source library and would save Laramie money as opposed to other more common commercial GUI libraries. I also used Numpy and Pandas for calculation and data manipulation respectively. My end product was a success, and I would estimate cut down the time on certain pipeline selection projects (like the one I did!) by 90%. It also will save the company money in the future as one feature I added (pressure-line graphing) was previously outsourced to engineering consulting companies.
Aside from my coding experience, I gained valuable industry experience through exposure and project experience on various aspects of the Oil and Gas Industry. I spent time researching and meeting with vendors for a wide span of equipment used on the production side of natural gas, modeled capital expenditures for facilities wellpad engineering, as well as prepared Production Flow Diagrams for construction and regulatory review purposes.
In all, I had an excellent summer in my first professional engineering environment. I feel strongly that I was able to accomplish my number one goal of being a net contributor to the company, and also learned a lot about what it means to be a professional engineer.
I must thank my manager. His guidance was essential throughout the summer, and I can say without a doubt that his support was the biggest factor in my success in my internship with Laramie.