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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3134

Petroleum and natural gas refining plant operators

Petroleum and natural gas refining plant operators operate and monitor plants and adjust and maintain processing units and equipment which refine, distil and treat petroleum, petroleum-based products and by-products, or natural gas. Tasks include - (a) operating electronic or computerized control panels from a central control room to monitor and optimize physical and chemical processes for several processing units; (b) adjusting equipment, valves, pumps, controls and process equipment; (c) controlling process start-up and shut-down, troubleshooting and monitoring outside process equipment; (d) verifying equipment for malfunctions, testing well pipes for leaks and fractures and arranging for maintenance; (e) analysing sample products, performing tests, recording data and writing production logs. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Blender operator (petroleum and natural gas refining ) - Gas plant operator - Paraffin plant operator - Petroleum process operator - Refinery process technician - Still operator (petroleum and natural gas refining) Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Chemical processing plant controller - 3133 - Chemical products plant and machine operator - 8131

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 234 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • refinery shift manager
  • oil refinery control room operator
  • gas processing plant control room operator
  • petroleum pump system operator
  • gas processing plant operator

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

70.9
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 29.1 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 29.1 = 70.9

That's the whole sum, and you can check it against the ILO's study.

68.5
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 4 US jobs

43.1
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 43.3 · hand skill 43.3 · cramped spaces 42.7 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on 50+ · fiddly 39.4+ Hands-on, fiddly work in tight spaces

More fine handwork, and more time in cramped or awkward spots, than a typical hands-on job. That is exactly what machines find hardest: they do best in tidy, predictable places.

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.7-work-setting measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

This number is probably too high

This score only looks at AI tools like chatbots. It doesn't look at robots at all — and this job rates 68.5 out of 100 for how hands-on it is, which is exactly where robots come in.

Have a look at the tasks below and judge for yourself. The ILO scored them low because a chatbot can't do them. Whether a machine with hands could is a different question, and we can't answer it yet.

The tasks behind the score

The score is the average of these. A job is really a bundle of tasks, and an average can hide how uneven that bundle is.

The task AI could do most of scores 46.5, while the average is 29.1. A big gap means some of this job is wide open to AI and some of it barely at all. That's quite different from a job where everything sits somewhere in the middle, even when the averages match.

  1. 46.5

    Analysing sample products, performing tests, recording data and writing production logs.

    Low
  2. 30

    Operating electronic or computerized control panel from a central control room to monitor and optimize physical and chemical processes for several processing units

    Low
  3. 26.5

    Adjusting equipment, valves, pumps, controls and process equipment

    Low
  4. 25.8

    Controlling process start-up and shut-down, troubleshooting and monitoring outside process equipment

    Low
  5. 16.5

    Verifying equipment for malfunctions, testing well pipes for leaks and fractures and arranging for maintenance

    Very Low

5 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.7-work-setting

Helped, or replaced?

The score above can't tell a tool that makes you faster from one that does the task instead of you. Jobs and Skills Australia looked at those two things separately, and this is their result, matched to this job.

One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.

AI helps you
69
AI does it for you
40

Helping wins by 29 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 3992

Compared with similar jobs

There are 82 jobs in the “Technicians and associate professionals” group, averaging 65.3. This one is above that.