Petroleum Engineering is involved in the exploration and production activities of petroleum as an upstream end of the energy sector.

Upstream, refers to the source of the petroleum, the petroleum deposit, usually buried deep beneath the earth's surface supplying flow to consumers as a river supplies the ocean.

The diverse topics covered by petroleum engineering are closely related to the earth sciences.

Petroleum engineering topics include economics, geology, geochemistry, geomechanics,geophysics, oil drilling, geopolitics, knowledge management, seismology, team building, team work, tectonics, thermodynamics, well logging, well completion, oil and gas production, reservoir development, and pipelining.