2020 Romania Study Abroad Trip Blog: Day 4

January 7

As Ana Esteban explains below, today was spent exploring the university and learning about optimizing connections. There’s one thing we didn’t need Dr. Teodoriu to teach us however: there’s nothing like warm, homemade donuts on a cold winter’s day.

This is day five of our study abroad class in Romania. The weather continues to be very cold (28 °F in the morning) and Christmas decorations are still up around town. The food in Romania is delicious and we enjoy starting our days by having a very good breakfast at the hotel. The breakfast time is the moment where we get to know each other a little better and talk about our individual experiences in Romania. Class today will start by 4:15 p.m. and because of that, we all went to the mall to check out local products, play some games, and have lunch. On our way to the University of Oil and Gas Ploiesti we had a very nice surprise. Dr. Catalin’s mom baked us some fresh and delicious gogoși.

 

At the university, Dr. Catalin took us for a tour where we got to see the outside of the drilling, production, and refinery buildings. Close to the buildings, we saw some prototype equipment that were built by students to show the quality and finishing of the equipment developed on their research. We also saw a small pump jack located inside of the university.  In class we learned about how to optimize the process to make a connection on a rig. We focused on kelly and top drive rigs. We watched some videos to learn about the process of making a connection and identifying how much time it takes to complete each step of this process. After that, we had a discussion about areas that can be improved and automated in order to decrease the overall process time and costs while maintaining safety as a priority. After that, we went to an Italian restaurant to have dinner and experience some of Romania’s culture.

OU Mewbourne Romania

 

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