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.
In the USA, petroleum engineering students with good grades can get an internship after sophomore year making $700 to $900 / week As young as age 20) Upon graduation, usually age 22 or 23, starting salaries are about $100,000 per year.
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It depends on the particular company. If you go to work for a service company, you could be in the field quite a bit. If you work internationally on a rotation basis, you might wor cas much as 28 days on and then 28 days off. I don't know if they are still giving an equal amount of days off as days on. At times in the pst, some service companies were asking folks to do shifts like 3 weeks on, 2 weeks off because the demand for workers was so great. If you work for an oil company, it will really depend on the job and the company, but a safe assumption might be that you could be away about half of the time. This is something for you to pursue in the interview process. I can tell you that as a working mom, when my kids were small, I was able to work in jobs that required very little travel. It was helpful that I had been working about 10 year and had established a good reputation. When my youngest was in high school, I accepted an opportunity for a different position that had a lot of travel, so it can vary over the span of your career.
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The market is so good right now, that I don't think it is going to be a big factor that your prior internships were not in oil and gas, so long as they were technical/engineering internships. All companies understand that the biggest component of your engineering education is learning how to solve problems, becoming acquainted with various technical concepts and learning how to work with others. a good GPA will make you stand out as well as leadership experience in college. Officer of ASME chapter, philanthropic groups or even fraternity or sorority is all good. Of course as a senior, it might be too late for you to do too much about that. You want to show that you are not just book smart but that you have people smarts and that you can handle the course work and still have a life outside of classes. Personally, I prefer to see someone who had some depth in one or two extracurriculars and not somebody who joined 500 different clubs. Also, don't ever apoligize for asking questions, okay? That is what I am here for and that is what I look for in a new engineer! Realize, too, that your resume just gets you in the door for an interview, so you really need to practice your interview skills and be ready to sell yourself. If here are career fairs at your college, be sure to attend and meet the recruiters. Business, no matter what kind, is all about RELATIONSHIPS. They don't always teach that in engineering school. If there are not any career fairs,check out regional and national engineering conferences for ASME, SPE, SWE , NSBE, etc. they often have huge career fairs. Best of luck to you
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Wow - great question. I would think your traffic network modelling skills could be credible to the field of flow assurance. FA is a relatively new term and it could fall under Petroleum Engineering or Mechanical or Chemical. Back in my day, we did not have any courses on it, but I could envision this being an FA course being taken by multiple disciplines. I don't really have any particular views other than some of the FA problems can be pretty complex and lend themselves to a lot of teamwork to overcome them.
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What would be the purpose of doing a management course? I think it is more important to get some practical experience.
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In the USA, beginning technicians / technologists can start at around $40k. However, with prior experience (not necessarily in the petroleum industry), I have seen $60k. Petroleum engineers are starting at around $90k/year. Some companies offer lower fixed salaries but then offer an annual bonus that equates to about the same compensation.
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Please read the earlier posts as I have addressed this already.
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