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 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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Chemical Engineering is going to focus on understanding chemical reactions used in industrial processes, how to optimize them, predict outcomes, understand potential hazards, etc. Petroleum engineering will cover geology, well construction, estimating reserves, economics, some chemical reaction / surface facility design (but in less detail than in chemical engineering) and some tranportation/logistics. Personally, I would recommend chemical engineering because it makes you appealing to a broader selection of jobs and companies. However, if you KNOW you want to be in the Upstream Oil and Gas business OR if you know you want to go on to get a law degree and practice oil and gas law, then I would recommend Petroleum Engineering. Starting salaries for Petroleum Engineers is hovering near the six figure mark right now, but Chemical Engineers are not very far behind. After a few years on the job, that tends to even out and folks are paid based on their contributions not their degree. Our business is cyclic and always has been. The cycle is favorable right now BUT when there is a downturn, Petroleum Engineers are not in demand and the degree is not as favorable. Upstream Oil and Gas companies will always want to hire and train chemical engineers but the reverse is not true - Chemical companies rarely want to hire and train Petroleum Engineers. The ideal situation would be to get a chemical engineering degree and do internships at an Oil and Gas company to make sure this is the profession you want to pursue.
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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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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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I am a petroleum engineer, not a refinery engineer. I suggest you check out this website and decide for yourself: http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/transportation/consumer_tips/regular_vs_premium.html
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It depends on what you want to do in the oil and gas industry. If you want to stay with structural engineering and work on designing platforms and the like, you would want a master's degree in Civil and you would likely be working for an Engineering & Construction (E&C) Firm and less likely to be working for a major integrated oil company. If you wanted to work at a major integrated oil company and oversee the work being done by an E&C firm, that is also a possibility, but I think there are fewer jobs there and they are likely to hire an experienced person from an E&C firm. If you want to get into the day to day operations, a BSCE plus an MS PetE will make you very attractive for a wide variety of entry level positions such as Drilling, Facilities Engineering, Reservoir Engineering and Subsurface Engineering. There is a pretty large demand right now as the average age of our employees is getting pretty high and a shortage is predicted in the next few years. Best of luck to you.
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