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.
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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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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I think you are confusing profits with return on investment. Yes, oil companies have made a lot of profit in sheer # of dollars but if you look at the capital employed, the rate of return is nowhere near what Apple or Microsoft makes. The other thing to take into account is that oil companies don't control the lion's share of oil and gas reserves any more. The nationalized oil companies in places like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran and Venezuela control most of the reserves and impact the price of oil and gas.
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I would say that it is not extremely common as it is not the place for everybody. However, it is very common for engineers and geologists to start with a large company, get their training and then leave for smaller companies that can't afford to run their own training programs OR they leave to start their own business. The big money (and big risk) is running your own company. You have to get funding but if you have just one big success, you can become very wealthy. I'm a bit risk averse which is why I never took the plunge to go out on my own, plus I liked the environmental side of the business better than the frontline operations. Environmental work is a bit grueling at a consulting firm but at a large company it is a bit more of 9 to 5 job which was good for me and my kids as they were growing up. Also, I was attracted to the fact that, at a large company, there would likely be opportunities to work in different areas of the business without having to change companies and lose seniority and/or benefits. Also, if you don't like your boss, he/she will eventually get transferred (or you will). At a small company, you could get stuck with a bad boss or bad work group for decades.
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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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Either one is good. Civil should give you some basics in structural (steel and concrete) as well as soils and geotechnical that will be useful in drilling. Mechanical engineering basics will help out with facilities design and understanding subsurface mechanical aspects. The first two years of both programs should be fairly similar. I would pick the one that you enjoy the most. if you are a glutton for punishment, fido what I did. Get your bachelor's degree and then go to school at niight for your masters in Petroleum while you are working for an oil company and let them pay for it. In that case a mechanical degree is going to make you more marketable. Some oil companies don't hire many Civils.
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