Oil Comp Engr
38 Years Experience
Houston, TX
Female, 60
I recently retired from a major integrated oil company after 38 years. I have degrees in Civil and Petroleum Engineering. I worked with safety, health and environmental management systems and operations in the upstream (finding and producing oil and gas) and downstream (refining, chemicals and distributions) areas. I travelled all over world, enduring good & bad business cycles and good and bad managers.
Your best bet is probably PE if you are sure you want to work in the oil industry. The risk is that jobs may or may not be there when you graduate. The price oil has currently fallen below $80/bbl and the market is starting to tighten up. If you are willing to rotate and go places that are not the garden spots of the world AND if you graduate with a strong GPA, then you have a decent shot at finding a job.
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I am not aware of any office jobs that allow this type of work except for folks I know who work in some hard to staff locations in the Mid East and Africa. Those folks work 28 days on and 28 days off.
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I'm sorry, but I am not familiar with the educational system in Nigeria. I don't know what a "bsc 2.2" is. Ithink you need to seek out some folks at oil companies in Nigeria and talk to them directly.
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If you are working at a job in an office as a petroleum (not protroleum) engineer in Houston, you would likely work 5 days a week or possibly have every other Friday off. If you get a position as a rotator to the US Gulf of Mexico, you might be working 14 days on and 14 days off. If you get a position as a rotator to a foreign country, you might be working 28 days on and 28 days off. I can't tell you how this would affect your annual pay as every company has their own set of pay guidelines.
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Very tough question. Petroleum engineering, historically, HAS been cyclical. When times are good, petroleum engineers command the top salaries. Right now, the price of oil has dropped below $80/bbl and some are saying that domestic spending (and thus demand for PEs) will drop. I suggest you take a look (probably on Wikipedia or SPE.org) to see how quickly oil prices can rise and fall. In bad times, other industries tend not to hire petroleum engineers because there is a perception (partly true) that they are too specialized to adapt to a general manufacturing job. On the flip side, large oil companies have extensive training programs and are geared up to train MEs, CEs, ChEs to do petroleum work. If you think that you will be at the top of your class at Texas Tech, petroleum engineering is not too much of a gamble and you will have your pick of jobs among both independent companies and major oil companies. (If AP Physics, AP Calculus, etc. come easily to you, that's a good indication that you will probably do well in college.) However, if you graduate with a 3.0 average or less in Petroleum Engineering with mediocre internships and the economy is down, you may have a tough time finding a job. I tend to be a bit risk averse and recommend to folks to stick with a broader degree (you almost can't go wrong with mechanical or chemical engineering in terms of versatility) and try for internships in the oil industry during university. You also should investigate how difficult it would be to switch into petroleum engineering during your second or third year OR possibly get a dual degree such as ME and PE if you can afford that. If you have a lot of AP courses, purusing a dual degree may be a realistic option. Definitely talk to the advisors at Texas Tech. Hopefully they won't make you select your major until after you are admitted. Best of luck to you.
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1. I chose engineering as a career mostly by default. I was good in math and science and LOVED solving practical problems relatively quickly. I did not like medicine, law or business school. I was lucky to have high school teachers that steered me towards engineering. I did not know excactly what I wanted to do within the field of engineering when I first entered colled.
2. Career wise, I figured out during my early college career that I wanted to work with things that I could touch, feel and see (i.e. civil engineering). Electrical engineering was too abstract for me, though I loved the math & computer engineering aspects. Chemical engineering was just a bit too complex for me (too many variables all at once). Civil engineering also had that "people" orientation that seemed to be less present in the other disciplines. Mechanical engineering was my second option if civil did not work out. When I graduated, there was a HUGE demand for engineers to do petroleum work and a degree in civil was a relatively good fit for drilling, where I started (cement design, casing design, working with geologists, doing project management / scheduling work). I started in drilling with the hope that it would work out and it did, but there was a bit of "fingers crossed" on my part at the beginning. I had several job offers and went with the company that seemed to suit my personality most closely. Over time, I moved into environmental work (which was a part of our Civil Engineering department at universtiy) as opportunity presented itself.
3) Re. the positive and negative aspects, I think I have covered this in previous posts.
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You will be at a bit of a disadvantage but, that said, the demand for petroleum engineers usually exceeds the supply and so mid size and large companies are prepared to provide some training. You can increase your odds by taking a geology course or two and taking some online or self study training. In the long run, I thimk you are better off with a broad degree like mechanical because it allows you to change industries. Have you checked the price of oil lately? It is down quite a bit and there are lits is stories in the news about how the upstream sector is cutting budgets and reducing hiring.
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