Introducing Lufthansa’s Oil and Energy Club and Flying Blue’s Petroleum Club
I briefly mentioned the existence of the Flying Blue Petrolum club in passing in this post, but reader Damon's comment in that post inspired me to do this write this new one.
If you work for a services or operating company in the oil and gas industry, you may or may not be aware of two key programmes to add to your mileage-hoarding arsenal. Firstly the Lufthansa Oil and Energy Club, and secondly the Flying Blue Petroleum. Sadly Oneworld don't have an equivalent programme (that I know of) but I'd be delighted to see the likes of British Airways on board!
Membership to the two programmes is free, but requires some proof of your employment to an O&G company. Usually a company email address like joe.bloggs@bp.com will suffice. I've never heard of anyone in big companies needing any further. Unfortunately I don't know anyone in smaller companies who can fill me in on those details. If you work for a small company and you are already a member or succeed with membership after reading this post, please do post your experience below!
Off the top of my head, the biggest operators I can think of are: BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Total, Petronas, Petrobas, Eni etc., and the biggest services: Schlumberger, Wood Group, Baker Hughes etc. If you work for any of the above, you'll have absolutely no problem having your membership approved. (And yes they do check, so don't go signing up if you don't work there!). If you're a one-man band or a very small company, don't be surprised if Lufthansa or Flying Blue come back asking for your company's registration documents!
So let's go through the programmes in a little more detail.
Lufthansa Oil and Energy Club:
The main benefits are:
- Automatic upgrade to Frequent Traveller status, which is Star Alliance Silver. This will mean you are granted business class check-in, lounge access to Lufthansa's own lounges when flying Lufthansa (or the other Miles and More member airlines), 25% extra mileage bonus, no expiry of award miles.
- Guaranteed Europcar “Volkswagen Golf class” hire even without reservation at €79 at Munich or Frankfurt airports, which gives a 500 M&M award miles per rental. Not too bad a deal this one, but be careful because I don't know if they add on extra surcharges like “premium location fee” or the likes.
- Free meal and drinks vouchers. Rather unhelpfully they say you can only use them at Frankfurt Airport, but since I'm not a member I can't attest the contrary!
- Employment with an operator or services company in the oil and gas industry.
- Oil and Energy Club membership lapses upon expiry or termination of your employment contract
- Sign up link here
- Business Class check in with Air France and KLM at Paris CDG and Amsterdam Schiphol (AMS) airports respectively
- Business Class check in at any of the AF or KL “oil routes”
- Free KLM Crown Lounge access when connecting between AF and/or KL flights at AMS.
- Free access to the Flying Blue Petroleum lounge at the Pullman CDG.
- Use of the priority lines at security and gate queues at AMS (and almost certainly at CDG too, but I personally haven't noticed the signage there)
- up to 3 hours — a drink
- between 3-6 hours — a meal
- over 6 hours — a day-room at the hotel, plus a second meal.
- Employment with an operator or services company in the oil and gas industry.
- One long haul round trip or two short/medium haul round trips per year on any of the “oil routes”. Your membership WILL be cancelled if you don't satisfy this
- Sign up link here (requires log in to your existing Flying Blue account. If you don't have one, then use this link first)
Conclusion
To me the memberships seem nothing more than granting lounge access for people who don't normally have access anyway. It's not the biggest perk, but I'm sure the extra few drinks before your long haul economy flight might make you more ‘comfortable' 😉
However, for the occasional Lufthansa flier who accrues mileage very slowly and would never get status otherwise, it's a nifty way to activate the non-expiry of your award miles. Just make sure you use them before your leave your company!
I work for a fairly large company Invensys but had already done some trips to oil rigs in Nigeria and India. I applied and got accepted.
Not sure its gonna be much use as I haven’t been through AMS since.
On Tuesday I will be heading back through CDG but I’m not really sure its worth heading so far out of the airport to the Pullman Hotel just for free lounge access.
I only have 3 hours.
My KLM Petroleum membership has just been cancelled. I flew UK to Kuala Lumpur in December but returned 1st January so that didnt count as a return trip in 2013. I shall now be joining Lufthansa as seems a much better option.
Argh!!! Too bad. Try calling up Flying Blue to see if they’ll grant you a ‘one time exception’.
Thanks Tim. Emailed Pwetroleum club and they made exception. New card being issued.
excellent result – well done!
After spending much of his life in Air France lounges and jets for work, one of my good friends finally took my advice and wrote a book about being an oilfield rotator. If you have a tablet or phone, look up ‘A Hitch in the Heart of Africa’ in the Amazon ebook store. It’s a fun, quick read and especially neat for oilfield professionals. Throughout the book, it becomes pretty obvious what operator they are talking about. Anyways, he talks a lot about the travel and what rotating is like; it’s nice to see some literature representative of our working lifestyle.
Thanks Tim. I’ll take a read!