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 there is very good growth potential because there are a lot engineers in the industry in the 50 to 60 year age bracket who are getting ready to retire. Due to the cyclical nature of the oil business, there is not an even distribution of folks across all age ranges. People in our industry commonly talk about the "great crew change" that is coming and most of the major oil companies and large service companies have increased hiring in the last 5 years because they realize that ten engineers with 4 years of experience do not equal one engineer with 40 years of experience.
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Absolutely! You should be in demand in the US as well. Keep your grades up, try to get a good summer internship and best of luck to you.
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That's a very good question. It really depends on the individual company. Some companies give their experienced technicians a fair amount of autonomy and authority and they travel to the field. At one company, for example, it was a technician, not an engineer who provided a lot of support for completions and workovers. He designed and ordered all the components of the gas lift system and then went to the field to ensure the installation went as planned. During busy times they might work 50 or 60 hours weeks and typically, they are salaried (translation = no overtime pay but also more flexibility to take personal time off).
I have seen other companies and departments where the technicians do a lot of repetitious, routine tasks but work a 40 hour week and never go to the field. They function a bit more like an administrative assistant than a true "technician". To be fair, some of these technicians did not have college degrees, maybe high school plus just a year or two of community college. If you are pursuing a career as a technician / technologist, be sure to ask companies you are interviewing with for their expectatations and typical career path.
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Before switching majors, I would see if you can fix the situation. if you switch majors, you might lose a lot of ground. If your professors are decent and your program is accredited, I would work with some other students and approach your engineering dean and/or career placement with some proposed solutions. Do you have a student section of SPE? If not, consider chartering one; see if you can get local professionals to come give lectures and help with resumes, interviewing and finding internships; ; SPE might be able to connect you with a retired petroleum engineer who lives in your area that would be willing to help; consider some joint activities with geology majors; if you are successful, you will have an impressive achievement for your résumé. Future employers want to see that you take on a tough problem, show some creativity and solve it. It is about more than just mastering the technical topics And getting good grades in your courses. It is about showing that you can work with others and improve things. Best of luck to you.
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It will depend on how much experience you have and what you want to do when /if you leave. If you have, say, 10 years of experience wand have been promoted into management, then I would think your chances could be pretty decent of landing another management job in a technical field. If you become very specialized in a technical area that is unique to oil and gas it could be more difficult. However e, there is always the option of pursuing a master's degree in mechanical engineering or getting an MBA. Let's say you have a lot of experience in natural gas processing, working with compressors, piping design, corrosion engineering, etc., those skills will be very transferable to other fields. If you specialize in well log analysislethal would be less transferable. If you love what you do and are good at it, you will make it through any downturns. US educated petroleum engineers will always be in demand if they are willing to relocate. I lived through the downturn of 1985 /1986 when the price of oil fell to around $9/bbl. I only had about 5 years experience but had earned a reputation for being a hard worker who got along well with others And loved the job.
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Mathematics is about so much more than "number crunching". Computers do more than just add lots of numbers. Mathematics is about solving problems and building models that simulate natural phenomena. Engineers either build those mathematical models OR they have to study mathematics and computer science to be able to understand whether the models they use are valid for the problem they are attempting to solve. if you want to delve deeper, I recommend a fascinating book called, " Is God a mathematician?". You can find it Amazon or most large bookstores.
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One of the things I like the most about Petroleum Engineering is the wide variety of things you might end up doing. Starting out, you need to spend a fair amount of time in the field to learn how things really work. I recommend that everyone get some experience in either drilling, workovers, completions or surface facilities (processing units or small gas plants). When I have worked in those types of assignments, I typically spend about 25% to 40% of my days at the site and the remainder in the office. This may make me sound ancient, but we did not have laptops or even desktops back then, so there were some things that had to be done back at the office. These days, some of the new engineers spend 75% or 80% of their time in the field. After getting a good 4 or 5 years of field experience, you will either be ready to move into management or take a broadening assignment in reservoir engineering. When I worked as a reservoir engineer, I went to the field far less (maybe 10% of the time), BUT by that time, I knew a lot of the field personnel, so it was easy to call them on the phone, understand what they were doing and get the information I needed. As a reservoir engineer, you have a lot more influence on what gets done. Reservoir engineers (along with geologists) make the proposals to management on which wells to drill or workover, whether to shut in or abandon a well, lay a pipeline, etc. So although you are stuck at a desk, you have more of a long term, business focus. Another thing that can really impact how much time you spend in the office vs the field is the type of fields that you are working. If you are assigned to a complicated project, you might spend a lot of time in the planning phase (i.e. - a year or more in the office to plan a well that will cost a hundred million dollars to drill and take several months). If you are working on a mature field with uncomplicated wells and facilities, the planning phase will be much shorter. No matter what job you have as a petroleum engineer, however, you need to enjoy working in teams with people of all different levels of experience and education.
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