Chemical and Petroleum engineering

<p>I want to become Petroleum engineer and I have 2 scenarios</p>

<p>1st scenario- I do petroleum engineering directly for a Bachelor Degree. But some people say it's insecure because i'll be limited and petroleum wont last for long.</p>

<p>2nd scenario- I do Chemical engineering with a minor in petroleum engineering for the Bachelor degree, then do a master in petroleum engineering. This scenario might be good but I wonder which scenario will i get more paid and get the job stability.</p>

<p>Please I need some advise with fact so I know what will be the best</p>

<p>Actually Petroleum engineering is a booming field, because of the scarcity of oil. More PEs are needed to design and maintain various platforms, essentially the job is mostly upsteam work. ChemEs on the other hand work in the refineries, by supervising the process and updating them if necessary, so essentially downstream work. </p>

<p>Before you decide to do PE make sure you understand what you’ll be doing. While the pay is amazing you very well may end up working on an offshire rig for months at time, which is not right for everyone.</p>

<p>Upstream work is more interesting to me.But I talked to a petroleum engineer and he was talking me into considering chemical engineering in other to somehow broaden my job opportunity and may be use it as a back up. I need more concrete facts in other to secure my future in this career</p>

<p>Chemical engineering and Petroleum Engineering are very different so its best to choose one field. Either devote your studies to chemical engineering (downstream) or devote them to Petroleum Engineering (upstream).</p>

<p>Petroleum Engineers usually spend the first few years working on the field which can be tough but after you have some experience you won’t have much trouble finding a good office job in a modern city and work normal 9-5 hours. Both fields and office jobs pay very well. If you want a “back-up” I recommend doing something more closely related to petroleum engineering like Geophysics which is used in the upstream Petroleum Industry so it supplements a B.S. in Petro. Eng. but it is also used in many other industries like Geothermal, just in case. But frankly, at least in our lifetime, petroleum will continue being a very important resource.</p>

<p>It would be kind of a waste to do petroleum engineering and then chemical engineering because they are pretty unrelated and so it wouldn’t really help you getting a job because ultimately you are either going to have a career in the upstream or the downstream sector.</p>

<p>According to Bureau of Labor stats Petro. Eng is growing and Chem. Eng. is shrinking over the next decade.</p>

<p>I recommend the first scenario. By the time Petroleum starts to become less important to the world you will have a lot of experience as a Petroleum engineer and experienced engineers are almost always in high demand.</p>

<p>I applied to 5 Petroleum Engineering programs and all of them had a job placement rate of 98% or higher. (Texas, Penn state, Alaska, Colorado, Oklahoma). Average starting salary at all universities for entry level Petro. Engineers was not less than $76,000 and one state had a starting salary of $99,000 as of 2009.</p>

<p>btw Oil is not scarce. We still have at least 4.2*10^13 gallons of oil left. Thats just the conventional oil that we know of. Who knows just how much oil is in the Arctic areas that are unexplored. Its possible that the difficult to refine oil may become easier to refine in the future and that number would double.</p>

<p>Also, you do not end up working on offshore rigs, the desert or the arctic for “months at a time”. Most petroleum engineers are given reasonable shifts of around 3 weeks working on the field and 3 weeks vacation.</p>

<p>i would do chem eng, with the minor in petro eng. Like the above poster said, oil business isn’t going anywhere for at least a few decades, plus baby boomers are going to be retired in a few years so job demand will be even higher than it already is. Also it could happen that you will be more interested in say pharmaceuticals or plastic or polymers in the future and chem eng opens those opportunities for you.</p>

<p>I’ll probably go by scenario 1.
Thanks for the suggestions</p>

<p>I was in similar dilemma then on reading found you have to be a specialist in ur field you cant be jack of all trades n master of none -
Im potentially wanting to study peng in uk - where i live - Any idea best undergrad uni its between Aberdeen & London south bank- the only 1 in london offering tge course??</p>

<p>Ps hw do i start new thread as cant see on my iphonne…</p>

<p>What would also be good for you is to read some posts from the chap Forever lsu i think he knws a lot. PS anybody knw him or if hes about could use his advice</p>