Oil and Gas Operations Manager Job Description

An Oil and Gas Operations Manager is accountable for what a producing area actually delivers: barrels and mcf to sales, a lease operating expense (LOE) number that holds, and a field that goes home safe. The job sits above the people who touch the equipment every day (lease operators, pumpers, foremen, production superintendents) and below the asset or regional leadership that sets the plan. BLS files the title under General and Operations Managers, an occupation it describes as overseeing activities too diverse to be classified into one area of management, and in an oil field that description fits: one week can run from a compressor outage to a landowner dispute to a budget reforecast.

The daily rhythm

The day tends to start with the morning report. Overnight downtime, wells that went down on high line pressure, a tank battery close to its haul-off limit, a gas buyer curtailing takeaway: the operations manager sorts these into what the foreman handles alone and what needs a decision. SCADA alarms and production surveillance screens show which wells lost rate, and the manager decides whether that warrants a pump change, a chemical adjustment, a flowline repair or a workover rig, and in what order.

Money

Budget ownership is a defining part of the role. The manager builds the LOE forecast by category (contract labor, chemicals, saltwater disposal, compression rental, power, repairs and maintenance) and explains the variance at month-end. Larger spending moves through an authorization for expenditure (AFE): the manager scopes the job, gets bids, writes the economic case and then answers for whether the work came in on cost. Choosing between a workover that restores rate and a cheaper well kept on its current decline is an everyday trade-off.

People and safety

Field teams are spread across leases and often work alone, so the operations manager sets the routes, on-call rotations and training that keep coverage steady. The manager also owns the safety system for the area: job safety analyses before nonroutine work, lockout and permit-to-work rules, contractor orientation, hydrogen sulfide procedures where sour gas is present, and incident investigations that end in corrective actions someone has to close.

Compliance

Producing sites answer to several regulators at once. Air permits and EPA methane standards govern tanks, pneumatic controllers and leak surveys; the state oil and gas regulator (the Railroad Commission of Texas, for example) handles well permits, production reporting and plugging; spill prevention plans cover tank batteries; and pipeline safety rules can reach gathering lines. The operations manager does not file every report personally, but a missed inspection or late notice lands on that desk.

Where the job sits

Operations managers work for exploration and production companies of every size, for midstream gatherers and processors, and for oilfield service companies that run crews for operators. The scope can range from a single field of conventional wells to a horizontal-well development with central facilities. Either way, the job is to keep the area producing to plan at a cost the company can live with.

Education

Two routes lead into this job. One runs through engineering: a bachelor's degree in petroleum, mechanical or chemical engineering, then several years as a production or facilities engineer before taking on people and budget. The other runs through the field: a high school diploma or an associate degree in petroleum or process technology, then years as a lease operator, pumper and foreman. A business degree paired with field time is another path. For top executives as a broad group, BLS lists a bachelor's degree as the typical entry-level education and five years or more of work experience in a related occupation.

Experience

As a rough guide, operations managers have spent a decade or more in production operations, including several years supervising foremen or a field team, before taking the role. A strong candidate can point to three things: production results, a clean safety and environmental record on the manager's watch, and a history of owning a budget rather than just spending against one. Experience with both conventional and horizontal wells broadens the jobs a candidate can compete for.

Technical knowledge

• Artificial lift: rod pumps, electric submersible pumps, gas lift and plunger lift, including when each fits and how each fails.
• Surface facilities: separators, heater treaters, vapor recovery units, compressors, saltwater disposal systems and LACT units for custody transfer.
• Well interventions: workovers, wireline, coiled tubing and rod or tubing repairs, and how to scope and price each.
• Data: SCADA, production surveillance and production-accounting systems, and the discipline to reconcile field volumes with sales.
• Economics: decline curves, lifting cost per barrel of oil equivalent, payout and the AFE process.

Regulatory literacy

The manager needs working knowledge of EPA air rules for oil and gas sites, the state regulator's permitting and reporting rules in each basin, spill prevention and countermeasure plans, and pipeline safety requirements for any gathering lines the company operates. Offshore roles add federal offshore safety and environmental management rules.

Credentials worth holding

• OSHA 30-Hour Outreach training card (OSHA Outreach Training Program, U.S. Department of Labor), a course OSHA describes as more appropriate for supervisors or workers with some safety responsibility.
• WellSharp well control certification (International Association of Drilling Contractors), useful where the area runs workover or drilling operations.
• Professional Engineer license (state engineering licensing boards, with exams administered by NCEES), for managers who came up through engineering.
• Project Management Professional (Project Management Institute), for those running facility builds or large capital programs.

Skills that separate candidates

Clear writing for AFEs and incident reports, the ability to say no to a foreman's request with a reason, comfort reading a P&L, and calm on the phone with a regulator or an angry surface owner all matter as much as technical depth.

Occupation-wide projections

BLS projects employment of top executives, the group that includes general and operations managers, to grow 5 percent from 2025 to 2035, faster than the average for all occupations, with about 304,100 openings for top executives a year on average. O*NET rates General and Operations Managers as faster than average growth (5% to 6%) for 2025 to 2035, with about 285,000 openings a year on average. Those figures cover the whole occupation across every industry; BLS does not project oil and gas operations managers separately. In May 2025, BLS counted 6,710 general and operations managers in Oil and Gas Extraction and 10,510 in Support Activities for Mining.

Conditions in the oil patch in 2026

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas surveys oil and gas executives about conditions in its Eleventh District, and its third-quarter 2026 report, released Sept. 30, 2026, pointed to modest hiring: the aggregate employment index rose from 4.7 to 15.2. Costs are the other half of the story for anyone who owns an LOE budget. Among exploration and production firms, the lease operating expenses index stood at 43.9, and the Dallas Fed noted that all cost indexes were above their series averages.

On the gas side, EIA's October 2026 Short-Term Energy Outlook put U.S. liquefied natural gas gross exports at 15 billion cubic feet per day in 2025 and forecast 18 in 2026 and 19 in 2027.

The methane rules are moving again

Methane compliance has been a shifting target for operations managers. EPA issued an interim final rule on July 31, 2025, extending deadlines in the NSPS OOOOb standards for control devices, equipment leaks, storage vessels, process controllers and closed vent systems, and a Dec. 3, 2025 final rule reaffirmed those extensions. The same actions moved the start of the Super Emitter Program, under which certified third parties report very large emission events, to Jan. 22, 2027.

On Oct. 29, 2026, EPA published a further proposed rule. It would rescind the Super Emitter Program, create subcategories for marginal and conventional well sites, and revise requirements for liquids unloading, process controllers, pumps, fugitive emissions and storage vessels. The proposal set a Dec. 16, 2026 comment deadline and was still a proposal as of November 2026, so field compliance programs still run to the rules in force while the reconsideration plays out.

Automation and the job

In the Dallas Fed's September 2025 special questions, 49 percent of oil and gas support services executives expected artificial intelligence to slightly increase the average lifespan of their equipment and 12 percent expected a meaningful increase, while 39 percent did not expect an increase. For an operations manager, equipment-health data of this kind feeds the choice of which repairs to make before a failure and how to defend that spending in the budget.

Moving up

Operations managers who perform can move to asset manager, regional vice president of operations or a corporate production role, and some move into acquisitions work where field knowledge prices the deal.

Dear Hiring Committee,

I am applying for the Oil and Gas Operations Manager position for your Central Basin area. For the past six years I have been production superintendent for Red Mesa Operating, where I run a field of conventional and horizontal wells through three foremen and a team of lease operators, pumpers and contract crews.

The part of the job I am proudest of is the budget. When I took over the area, our lease operating expense report was a list of numbers nobody could explain. I rebuilt it by category, set up a monthly review with each foreman, and started tying every large repair to an AFE with a clear economic case. Within two years the area was hitting its forecast inside a narrow margin, and the reviews had turned into planning meetings instead of explanations.

On production, I work from the surveillance screens every morning and rank wells by lost volume, not by who called first. That habit moved our workover rig onto the wells that paid back fastest and cut the time between a pump failure and a repair.

Safety is not a separate program on my field. We run job safety analyses before any nonroutine work, I review every incident report myself, and corrective actions stay open until someone shows me they are done. We have also tightened our leak survey and tank inspection routines so that compliance paperwork reflects what is actually happening on location.

I would bring the same habits to your area: plain reporting, a field team that knows the priorities, and a budget leadership can trust. I would welcome the chance to walk through how I would approach your first ninety days.

Sincerely, Jordan Alvarez