Internationally Recognized Petroleum Engineer Dishes On How EduTech Is Key To Greatness

Princess Chinyere Offor is currently a Contracts Engineer with Exxon Mobil Nigeria where she manages assets and processes to ensure optimization. Prior to that, she has served in the roles of execution planning, drilling engineering, and petroleum engineering. The latter had been the focus of her study at undergraduate and postgraduate levels while currently engaged in a Ph.D. program for Petroleum Economics and Policy at Emerald Institute, Portharcourt. 

Princess is big on volunteering and giving back as she believes that every individual has enormous potential to creatively solve problems and she aims to contribute to society by serving through her talents with excellence and passion. Her choice to make a career in Petroleum Engineering was born from her interest in contributing in leaps and bounds to a sector she believed Nigeria is heavily dependent on economically, and ultimately making it better.

For a bright mind like Princess, she has come about many milestones, all very different, yet all similarly shining and spectacular. One of such is her ability to contribute to the energy industry that has furnished her with the opportunity to learn from and play in diverse departments. Another is as a recipient of a scholarship from the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) which set her up as a role model and source of inspiration for her peers and up-and-comers. In her role as a volunteer for the SPE she wrote, collated, and curated content to create magazine publications for the body which exposed her skill for conceptualizing concepts and telling stories. Earlier in the year, an avenue to deepen her communication skill was also made available to her through a moderating session she was given. Her exceptional contributions in these capacities have made her beneficiary of Recognition of the Lagos Section of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and Regional Award Winner for Young Member Outstanding Service from the Society of Petroleum Engineers, International.

“When it comes to hard skills…nobody can outgrow the need for computing skills and computer literacy so just having the necessary skills like knowing how to utilise data whether it’s data science, data analytics, you can have those kind of skills and now find out what is necessary in the particular field you’ll like to grow in.”

In her view, leadership, communication, and emotional intelligence skills are a must-have to be a strong player in the world today. She expounded by saying this, “You need to understand yourself and also understand people and being able to communicate and now communication is expanded, not just talking, but how you present ideas. I could even almost lump data visualization even under communication because you’re trying to tell a story and you’re trying to get insights and then make a decision. So knowing the appropriate means of communicating is key”. Other soft skills that she opined as essential are presentation, negotiation, and teamwork.

For hard skills, her non-negotiables include computing skills and literacy, data management, and analytics. For her, the need for these skills cannot be outgrown. To illustrate this point she says, “you see your refrigerator in the house, and that process of compression and cooling, pressure-volume relationship, is the same thing when you want to see large liquefaction plants. It’s about the same principle”.

If we ever saw the concept of the time machine realized, Princess would go back in time to intimate herself of the need to get to doing and actualizations early and young. One of those intentions, writing and publishing a book, is however in view in real-time. In addition to that, she’ll tell her younger self to enjoy going through the process. Being open-minded, curiosity and not being afraid to take up space are things she got right in this timeline and would encourage her younger self to stick to. 

“I think that’s key and everything you’re doing at the institution (1010 Coding), keep it up. It’s fundamental.”

Princess recognizes that lapses exist in the Nigerian system and wishes that Nigeria experiences exponential economic growth so that standard of living and access to infrastructure and basic amenities of its citizens can improve. She yearns that every Nigerian see themselves through an empowered lens so that they take on challenges and provide solutions to a local and global extent. The education sector is another area she wants to see improved. 

“What I want to see for Nigeria is improvement in education, especially education as regards technology. It’s very key, especially for young kids and even young adults, and that’s why I would salute what you’re doing at 1010 coding. It is very key because education broadens your perspective. It gives you exposure, you can be here in Nigeria, but you understand what is happening globally, you understand the nuances to different things, you understand the applicability, you can export a solution, you can also import a solution. Education also makes you know that you can overcome limitations. I mean, some time back it was said that we would not be able to fly a plane but the Wright brothers did. Now we can see that it’s now space tourism, it’s no longer just being in the air.” she stated.

“It seems basic, right? It seems basic but that’s what education would do. It would make you know that with basic fundamental principles you can apply that to solve problems. I think that’s key and everything you’re doing at the institution, keep it up. It’s fundamental.” she ended.