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.
I think it will do neither. I think traditional oil and gas companies will continue to dabble around the margins. Oil and gas, in my opinion, is merely a commodity and will continue to be driven by the forces of the market.
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As a Petroleum Engineer, if you focus on reservoir engineering and well log analysis, there is really no reason for you to travel to the field other than a few trips to get oriented early on. The other extreme is drilling engineering where you could be in the field a lot, depending on your company.
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I don't know enough about the two programs to tell you about the differences, if any. Starting salaries likely rely on data submitted by students, who may be estimating the amount of bonus pay they expect to earn. At the end of the day, starting salaries are pretty good everywhere compared to other engineering degrees and compared to almost any other profession you can enter with an undergraduate degree. Large energy companies typically offer the same starting salary to engineers that are identical except for where they got their degree. A few years down the road, what matters is how well you are performing in your job. Are you helping the company make a good return on their investment or not. Those that do, tend to be rewarded and progress up the management chain.
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If you are asking why does water exist in oil fields, the answer is a bit complex but it stems from the fact that water exists in most permeable formations. Many formations were created with the deposition of sediments in marine and freshwater environments. Organic matter was also deposited. Over millions of years, under pressure and temperature, the organic matter decayed and was transformed into hydrocarbons. As to why there is conductivity associated with the water, I suggest you consult a reservoir engineering textbook as that is too complex a question for me to answer. The purpose of this forum is more about understanding what it is like to work in my field, not to answer technical questions.
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Choose Mechanical. It is more versatile and less dependent on the price of oil and gas. The price of oil has collapsed in the last 6 months and many, many companies aee laying people off. There's no guarantee the market will recover by the time you finish your degree. If it does not, you will have a tough time getting a job. If it DOES recover, companies will be hiring petroleum and mechanical and chemical engineers.
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It would depend on the company and whether you hired on as an expat. Often, US citizens who work overseas for a company based in the US get time off to come back to the US so I suppose it is possible to work the other way. Right now, however, the job market for all petroleum engineers us pretty difficult and engineers are happy just to get a job, let alone one with extra benefits.
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I don't think it's that weird at all. There is a lot of work that requires familiarity with both petroleum engineering and environmental engineering. In order to get a permit to drill, for example, it is often necessary to conduct an environmental impact assessment. Someone with expertise in both areas can bring a lot of value to the process. When I was getting my Master's degree, there were folks with a wide variety of backgrounds in my program. Keep in mind, however, that I pursued that degree a few cycles ago. Right now, with the collapse in oil prices, I wouldn't recommend to anyone to pursue an advanced degree in petroleum engineering. There are massive layoffs at the service companies. Things will turn around eventually, but there's no way to predict when that will happen.
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