It is normal to all young engineers or graduate engineers to seek job in oil and gas industry or petrochemical industry. This is mainly because of thinking that there lot of opportunity which ultimately gives more money relative to other industries.
So, it would be good to know the relation among those three. It is common to say oil and gas industry but very rare can hear that oil, gas, and petrochemical industry if those really doing business in upstream. Same thing goes to for those doing business in downstream, might think that upstream process nothing much than separating or removing water from oil.
There is no wrong to assume all those but slightly deviate from the track that those are interelated. For instance, upstream people might think that flaring is the safest way of release any excess hydrocarbon gaseous but those from downstream might think that up stream burning dollar and cents. Therefore, all need to come together to optimize the solution available currently to be more productive rather than blaming each other.
So, there are research and development are undergoing currently everywhere and among most of process technology licensors to turn all the product from earth to money. There is a term called monetization whereby couple of alternatives available to convert all the gaseous that being flared to money; e.g. mini LPG, mini CNG, etc. In downstream industry, lot of products those are being used are mainly from oil and gas which are called petrochemical products. The appliances might not fully made from oil and gas resource but at least finishing items are being made by petrochemical products which are called polymers. There are millions of example of polymers are being made from oil and gas such as poly vinyl chloride (PVC), poly ethylene, paint, polish (car, shoe, etc), cosmetics, etc.
Last not least, so far we are here with only fossil fuel and some countries already started thinking of alternative fuels also called renewable energy.
