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 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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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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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 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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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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If you work for a major integrated oil company you could be doing any of their entry level engineering jobs. Suggest you check out their recruiting websites for more details.
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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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