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A Membership Study of the Society of

Petroleum Engineering
A Suggestion Report
Mohamad Abdul Ghani
Omar El Hassan
ENGL 210

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Abstract:
The purpose of this research was to investigate the validity in the observation of lack in
membership in SPE. Because the ultimate goal of an SPE student chapter is to reach out to all the
student body to raise awareness about the Oil and Gas industry, the findings of this research are of
upmost importance to the continuity of the TAMUQ chapter.
The main argument this study has established is that SPE does indeed lack in both the
quantity and variety of active members. There are several aspects which encourage students to
enroll in SPE. The two main causes were identified as SPE-sponsored events and a good marketing
plan. The suggestion this study wishes to convey is the creation of two new committees within
SPE.

Introduction:
The international Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) is the biggest individual-member
organization in the world with 144,000 members. The reason behind its exemplary membership
count might be the requirement that if one is to work in the Oil and Gas industry, they have to be
a member of SPE International. What is interesting is the demographic of those members.
The Society of Petroleum Engineers, as the name implies, is an institution for Petroleum
engineers, however members are of different educational background. Most notably the number
of Mechanical Engineers in SPE exceeds that of their Petroleum counterparts.
From observations around campus, there is reason to believe that the international trend is
not replicated at TAMUQ. What that means is that there are not many members in the society, as
well as an existence of a lack in diversity amongst those members.
After investigation, this was proven true. With around 70 members about 13% of the
student body is enrolled in SPE. Furthermore, 1 electrical, 1 mechanical, and 3 chemical engineers
are part of the organization which amounts to minimal diversity. This affirms the lack in fulfillment
of an SPE student chapters duty: reaching out to the entire student body to inform about the Oil
and Gas industry.
In this report, the original assumption of lack in membership is proved, tried to make sense
of, and further analyzed with some suggestions to follow.

Methodology:
The purpose of this study is to observe the membership trends in SPEs TAMUQ student
chapter. The trends inspected are: the degree type current members of SPE are pursuing,
enrollment rates, and, finally, the factors affecting those enrollment rates.
Chronologically, data collection was done through:

Collecting membership data from SPE enrollment records

Collecting event logs from SPE and Orgsync records
Noting marketing trends from SPEs online presence
Surveying the student body at Texas A&M at Qatar (TAMUQ)
Interviewing various members of the TAMUQ community and SPE board

Most of the data collection was only possible through administrative access to SPE database
by the publications and technology officer, a co-writer of this report. After data collection, the
data was rigorously observed and inserted in a graphing program to pick interesting data and
eliminate redundant ones.

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Data Collection:
The study was initiated by looking into the percentage of students who are enrolled in SPE
compared to the entire student body at TAMUQ. By numbers, out of 518 degree seekers, only 70
are members of the society. Out of those 70, and as estimated by the executive board of SPE, a
maximum of 10 members are active.
Focusing on the demographics of the total current members, figure 1 represents the
distribution of the current members of SPE according to the degrees they are pursuing. Observing
figure 1, it can be seen that the vast majority (87.8%) of members are petroleum engineers, and
the problem of lack in membership can be further described as a lack in diverse majors of members.

Figure 1: A Demographic Distribution of SPE Members

To inspect the problem of lack of members, and to further suggest a solution, several factors
were studied. The first of those was membership rates by month. Data for these studies were
obtained from the SPE database.
Figure 2 illustrates the enlistment trend with a dramatic peak in membership in September
and November of 2014. From that, we can infer that there was a change in normal SPE activity
around that time. To prove that, two factors thought to affect membership were studied: SPE events
and marketing.

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New SPE Members Over 3 Years

35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0

Figure 2: The Membership Rates of SPE in Selected Months Over 3 Years

Figure 3 illustrates, during the same months in figure 2, the number of events arranged by
SPE. Similarly two abnormal peaks in the data were seen as well. To correlate, the two graphs
were superimposed to form figure 4. Interestingly, in the two months where the number of events
increased, the membership rates increased as well. The increase of events, however, is not linearly
related in the increase in membership. That was deduced by comparing the two previously
mentioned spikes. In specific, 33 new members joined SPE in the month of September when two
events were prepared in comparison to 10 new members in the month of November where four
events were planned. As a conclusion, the type of events held has a significant effect on enrollment
rates in SPE.

SPE Events Over 3 Years

5
4
3
2
1
0

Figure 3: The Event Rates of SPE in Selected Months Over 3 Years

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Number of Events and New Membership, Superimposed

New Members

Number of Events

Figure 4: The Rates of Membership and Events per Month

Similar to events, data for marketing was collected. After interviewing the previous vice
president of SPE about the societys online presence, we recorded the official SPE posts on
Facebook. Unlike events, the data was not possible to graph; we were only able to note 8 posts in
the last year.
Here it can be deduced that there is a significant lack in the quantity of marketing attempts
from SPE TAMUQ. The reasoning behind that comes from the observation that the number of
events per year (around 15 in 2014) exceeds that of the advertisements. The quality of the
marketing was also inspected. Figure 5 includes examples of two posters created by SPE to
promote events they held. The main problem found in these was the lack of visual appeal to the
student body not interested in the specific topic being presented at the respective event; they are
inviting to read for those not already wanting to attend.

Figure 5: Examples of Posters Created by SPE

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To quantify this lack in effective marketing, a survey was sent to the student body at
TAMUQ and 42 responses were recorded. Out of those, 31 (74%) thought they were underinformed about SPE events.

Solutions:
The first committee will be responsible for managing and supervising SPE events. This
study has confirmed that the most significant increases in enrollment rates were observed when
SPE increased the number of events organized. Another important factor was the type of the event
and it sponsered. The duty of this committees members will be to survey the student body and
focus on providing events which appeal to the diverse community in TAMUQ monthly. Ideally,
the committee would have to prepare a monthly report to the SPE executive board on monthly
basis.
The second committee will be responsible for supervising SPEs marketing plan. The
committee will handle tasks such as reaching out to students on various media platforms, ensuring
that all SPE activities receive full coverage, and educating the TAMUQ community about the
perks of joining SPE. Some of these perks are summarized in the series of poster in Appendix A,
which is an example of potential marketing intiatives.
Collaborative work between these two committees can help resolve several problems SPE
is currently facing. Ones like the lack of awareness that anyone can enroll in SPE which in turn
limits the potential members in the society.
Fulfilling the needs of a very diverse community here at TAMUQ is indeed a very difficult
task for the local chapter of SPE. For that reason, the most effective way of improving all the
aspects of membership would be to distribute specific tasks to each designated committee within
SPE. This is necessary for this SPE student chapter to fulfill its duty in informing the student body
about the various opportunities in the Oil and Gad industry.