ONGC Petroleum Engineer Recruitment: GATE to Own CBT, Posts and Dates

For years the standard advice to a petroleum engineering student was simple: write GATE PE, score well, get into ONGC. That route has not been open since 2024, though a future notice could change it. ONGC’s last large GATE-based intake was Advt 6/2022 on GATE-2022 scores, with 71 posts earmarked for Petroleum graduates. Its GATE-2023 round (Advt 1/2024) had only 3 Petroleum posts, all carried forward from 2021. Since Advt 1/2025 (10 January 2025) ONGC has run E1 recruitment through its own computer-based test, with no GATE score involved: 25 Petroleum posts in 2025 and 9 in the latest round, Advt 2/2026, whose CBT was held on 6 September 2026. This guide sets out every round document by document, the CBT pattern and syllabus, the age and eligibility rules, and what GATE PE is still for.

ONGC advertisements 6/2022, 1/2024, 1/2025 and 2/2026 (R&P).

ONGC’s recruitment-notice page lists GATE-based Graduate Trainee rounds every year from 2018 to 2021, then three documents that tell the story of the change. The table below reads each advertisement directly. “Petroleum posts” counts only posts whose essential qualification is a degree in Petroleum or Applied Petroleum Engineering; a petroleum graduate could also apply to posts open to any engineering branch, such as the 32 Materials Management Officer posts of 2022.

The GATE-2022 round is the one most people remember, and it is why “ONGC through GATE” still circulates. It advertised 871 posts in all. Four post types named Petroleum Engineering in their qualification. The Reservoir post was shared: 15 of its 33 vacancies were earmarked for Petroleum and Applied Petroleum graduates. All carried the E1 pay scale of ₹60,000–1,80,000.

The GATE-2023 round was different in kind. Advt 1/2024 filled only 25 vacancies, every one “carried forward” unfilled from the 2021 rounds, and just three were for petroleum graduates (AEE Drilling: UR 1, SC 1, ST 1). It also used a composite merit: GATE score 60 + qualification 25 (20 for the degree, 5 for a higher degree) + interview 15, with a 1:5 shortlist and virtual interviews on 10–11 March 2024. Age was counted as on 31 July 2023: 28 for UR/EWS in Drilling and Cementing, 31 for OBC and 33 for SC/ST. ONGC gave the CTC as about ₹24 lakh.

From January 2025 ONGC stopped asking for a GATE score. It now holds its own two-hour test, shortlists 1:5 for interview and ranks on CBT plus interview. The two CBT rounds differ in two ways that matter to students. Final-year students could apply in 2025 but not in 2026: Advt 2/2026 considers only candidates who already held the degree on the last date of application. And the Petroleum intake fell from 25 to 9.

The ONGC test is shorter and gentler than GATE. It has 85 multiple-choice questions in two hours and no negative marking. Only 40 questions are on the engineering domain; the other 45 are general awareness, aptitude and English, which GATE PE candidates rarely practise. The CBT score (out of 85) and the interview (out of 15) make up the final 100.

The CBT’s Petroleum domain syllabus (published with Advts 1/2025 and 2/2026) reuses the pre-2027 GATE PE wording almost line for line. It still has “Solutions of one dimensional heat and wave equations”, the LNG value chain and “Waste treatment methods”. GATE 2027 drops the LNG and waste-treatment lines and replaces the heat and wave equations with the one-dimensional diffusivity equation (the heat equation’s form survives; the wave equation goes). It adds one block GATE never had, “Application in Oil & Gas Business”: surface facilities, gathering stations and field operations. And it does not contain the topics GATE 2027 has just added, such as reservoir simulation and geomechanics. So GATE PE preparation covers much of ONGC’s domain syllabus, but the overlap is with the syllabus you are being told to leave behind.

The belief that “PSUs recruit through GATE PE” does not survive a reading of the adverts. GAIL, the most-cited name, takes GATE scores only in Chemical, Instrumentation, Electrical and Mechanical, including in its first GATE-2027 advert of 1 September 2026. IOCL and HPCL run their own CBTs and have no Petroleum Engineering discipline for freshers. Oil India’s only 2026 post naming a petroleum degree needs nine years’ experience.

Three things. First, M.Tech and PhD admission: IIT (ISM) Dhanbad’s M.Tech Petroleum Engineering takes only the PE paper, IIT Madras keeps 15 of its 19 Petroleum M.Tech seats for PE-paper candidates, and IIT Guwahati’s Petroleum Science and Technology takes CH or PE. Our M.Tech cut-off guide has the scores. Second, preparation that transfers: GATE PE study covers much of ONGC’s domain syllabus. Third, the CH pairing: PE is currently listed only with Chemical Engineering in GATE 2027’s tentative two-paper list, and CH is a paper GAIL still recruits on, though its Chemical discipline asks for a degree in Chemical, Petrochemical or Chemical Technology, not Petroleum Engineering.