---
title: "Gas Plant Operator"
description: "Distribute or process gas for utility companies and others by controlling compressors to maintain specified pressures on main pipelines."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/gas-plant-operator"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Gas Plant Operator

**Category:** Production · **SOC code:** 51-8092 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 51-8092.00

Distribute or process gas for utility companies and others by controlling compressors to maintain specified pressures on main pipelines.

Also advertised as: Compressor Technician (Compressor Tech); Engine Room Operator; Gas Controller; Gas Dispatcher; Gas Plant Operator; Gas Resource Control Operator; Gas System Operator; Liquefied Natural Gas Technician (LNG Technician).

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $87,820 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $42.22/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $61,350 to $115,520, with the middle half between $76,870 and $100,870
- **Total US employment:** 18,030
- **Typical entry education:** High school
- **Preparation required:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** -6.0% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 1,400 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 40/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 18,030 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $61,350 |
| 25th | $76,870 |
| 50th (median) | $87,820 |
| 75th | $100,870 |
| 90th | $115,520 |
| Mean (average) | $88,710 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CA | $130,220 | $117,612 | 800 |
| NJ | $110,900 | $101,925 | 190 |
| OR | $109,760 | $106,191 | 70 |
| CT | $109,060 | $105,260 | Not published by BLS |
| LA | $108,350 | $122,836 | 800 |
| AZ | $104,600 | $103,897 | 140 |
| MA | $103,830 | $98,178 | 340 |
| MD | $102,950 | $98,086 | 180 |
| SD | $101,450 | $114,521 | 90 |
| AR | $100,870 | $116,027 | 400 |
| MI | $100,500 | $104,451 | 540 |
| MN | $100,500 | $101,905 | 360 |
| NY | $98,390 | $91,169 | 240 |
| UT | $98,300 | $99,430 | 160 |
| CO | $98,080 | $95,175 | 570 |

28 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 43 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/gas-plant-operator/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/gas-plant-operator.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 18,200 in the 2025–2035 base year to 17,100 by the end of the cycle — a loss of 1,100 jobs, or -6.0%. Declining: -6.0% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 1,400 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** High school diploma or equivalent (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Long-term on-the-job training.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 58.4% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 31.1% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 10.5% |

## What the work involves

- Contact maintenance crews when necessary.
- Record, review, and compile operations records, test results, and gauge readings such as temperatures, pressures, concentrations, and flows.
- Collaborate with other operators to solve unit problems.
- Monitor equipment functioning, observe temperature, level, and flow gauges, and perform regular unit checks to ensure that all equipment is operating as it should.
- Control operation of compressors, scrubbers, evaporators, and refrigeration equipment to liquefy, compress, or regasify natural gas.
- Read logsheets to determine product demand and disposition, or to detect malfunctions.
- Start and shut down plant equipment.
- Determine causes of abnormal pressure variances, and make corrective recommendations, such as installation of pipes to relieve overloading.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Monitoring — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Operations Monitoring — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Operation and Control — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Quality Control Analysis — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Troubleshooting — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Public Safety and Security — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mechanical — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Engineering and Technology — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Perceptual Speed — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Auditory Attention — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Selective Attention — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Realistic (R), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| R — Realistic | 6.65 |
| C — Conventional | 5.19 |
| I — Investigative | 2.58 |
| E — Enterprising | 2.28 |
| S — Social | 1.46 |
| A — Artistic | 1.00 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISTJ | 92.5 |
| ESTJ | 78.6 |
| ISFJ | 77.0 |
| ISTP | 75.3 |
| INTJ | 65.0 |

Best-fitting types: ISTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Power Plant Operator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/power-plant-operator) — median $102,040
- [Petroleum Pump System Operator, Refinery Operator, and Gauger](https://nuecareer.com/careers/petroleum-pump-system-operator-refinery-operator-and-gauger) — median $96,710
- [Gas Compressor and Gas Pumping Station Operator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/gas-compressor-and-gas-pumping-station-operator) — median $77,320
- [Biomass Plant Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/biomass-plant-technician) — median $102,040
- [Stationary Engineer and Boiler Operator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/stationary-engineer-and-boiler-operator) — median $78,620
- [Chemical Plant and System Operator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/chemical-plant-and-system-operator) — median $78,120
- [Hydroelectric Plant Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/hydroelectric-plant-technician) — median $102,040
- [Wellhead Pumper](https://nuecareer.com/careers/wellhead-pumper) — median $69,960
- [Pump Operator, Except Wellhead Pumpers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/pump-operator) — median $61,770
- [Power Distributor and Dispatcher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/power-distributor-and-dispatcher) — median $106,730

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/gas-plant-operator