Is Petroleum Engineerig still worth it?

<p>I'm a senior interested in engineering and I'm looking at some colleges in the North East. I have interests in mechanical, civil, and (you guessed it) petroleum engineering. However, not many schools offer petroleum engineering in the NE (Penn State is the only college I believe), and I'm now a little skeptical about job opportunities after college after this last year. Is petroleum engineering still a good field to go in to? (assuming I attend Penn State's petroleum engineering program). Or should I pursue another field of engineering that I'm interested in? Any input would be greatly appreciated.</p>

<p>You can get a Chemical Engineering degree and still work in the Petroleum field. I met a college professor on a tour who worked majorly in the Petroleum industry and had a Bach, Masters, and PhD in Chemical Engineering.</p>

<p>Chemical Engineering and Petroleum Engineering, somewhat ironically, have almost nothing to do with each other. ChemE is downstream work, whereas PetE is upstream work. PetE is more akin to a highly specialized form of civil engineering, combined with mining engineering.</p>

<p>Would you be willing to relocate after college? You’re not going to find many petroleum engineering jobs in the northeast.</p>

<p>Personally I don’t see a better time then now to be getting a PetrE degree…Its only a matter of time untill the price of oil shoots up again and the oil companies start hiring like crazy. The places that you can work are limited, but if everything goes well for you in school you should have plenty of job offers before you graduate.</p>

<p>Also, when the price of oil is high (as it was a year ago) the oil companies are really starving for engineers. You could work in the oil industry with almost any engineering degree. I know an agricultural engineer who was hired by Exxon, they just threw him a few petroleum books and told him to learn. Of course oil prices may not reach this level for a while to come and whether they will remain high or continue to rise is also very hard to predict.</p>

<p>Basically if you want to work upstream, go for petroleum or possibly mechanical. A chemical degree will set you up nicely for a downstream/processing job.</p>

<p>to the OP, the only three schools in your proximity, besides Penn St, are WVU and Marietta.</p>

<p>Good luck.</p>

<p>Petroleum engineering has historically been one of the most cyclical engineering fields, with “boom” periods of frantic hiring and sky-high salaries, and “bust” periods of layoffs and unemployment. Some people are comfortable with this, others prefer more stability.</p>

<p>It also helps if you like to travel, often to out-of-the-way parts of the world. Again, some people enjoy this more than others. </p>

<p>Petroleum engineering is primarily concerned with finding crude oil in the ground, estimating the amount, and getting it out of the ground. Then the crude oil has to be refined into usable products, but that’s a different issue, one that generally involves chemical engineers. The petroleum industry obviously needs both types of engineers, but they do different things.</p>

<p>Would PetE be a good major for geothermal?</p>

<p>1) I don’t think any oil company is starving for engineers. If the companies around me are any indication - they might let some people go.
2) Natural gas prices are horrible (a lot of Petrochemical activity in the US is related to natural gas production). I believe natural gas prices will be low for several years.
3) The graduating classes of petroleum engineer have perpetually increased since about 2003. The job market in 2011-2013 are going to be horrible. Better to get an ME/ChemE degree and try to get a PetE job upon graduation, but not pigeonhole yourself into a bad situation.</p>

<p>“Would PetE be a good major for geothermal?”</p>

<p>I think a Geologist would be better suited for Geothermal work.</p>

<p>Thanks for all the prompt replies. I’m not entirely interested in Chem E, so I’d prefer to stick to either civil or mechanical if I were not going into petroleum. Also as a side note, I’m willing to attend college anywhere in the country, so I may be looking at some schools in the Texas/Oklahoma area as well. However, I just want to make sure that PE won’t be a bust when I graduate from college if I were to graduate from a school such as U Tulsa. I do have family in Texas, but I’m not sure if PE would be a safe field if I couldn’t find a job in the south. I feel like I would be putting all of my eggs in one basket if I go to UT Austin, or U Tulsa. Should I still do it?</p>

<p>UT Austin is an all around great engineering school, and not just for petroleum engineering.</p>

<p>There’s plenty of petro work in North Dakota and north west Colorado too right now. Oil sands, oil shale?
Average new grad salary is supposedly up to $85k this year (up $10k over last).</p>

<p>Ahh, but a Mech E wouldn’t be doing what a Petrol E does in E&P. If a Mech E gets hired by a corp, they will more than likely be designing production platform structures, subsea equipment, well head, and drilling tech. None of which has anything to do with actual petroleum engineering. Maybe Civ E would get a job as a petrol engineer, but not a mech E right out of college, unless they got a grad degree and specialized in fluid mechanics, then they would be able to probably get a Pete Job. A chem E could do the same thing if they concentrated on applied computation in grad school. Although, if you like Mech E or Chem E or Civ E then you probably wouldn’t like Petrol E. Civ E is the closest related discipline, then again, you could still get stuck in off shore platform construction as a Civil Engineer, so, unless you go to grad school in another discipline, I wouldn’t bet on get a job as a petroleum engineer. Although, I know of a lot of petrol eng. who have been laid off recently. The money is where the oil is at, Texas has been drilled dry, I wouldn’t plan on seeing too much work out of there in the distant future. If you decide on petroleum, or the Oil Industry in general. Plan on working in deep gulf, deep north sea, Brazil, North Dakota and Colorado as mrego mentioned, Russian Siberia, the north slopes of Alaska, and probably areas in China and Africa. All the talk is about South America right now, don’t expect to be anywhere near civilizaton though. Yeah, you travel as a petrol E but that can be misleading. When people think travel they think oh nice cities, nice weather, go check out the locals, no, you’ll be in the middle of nowhere, so, plan accordingly.</p>

<p>Yeah, left out the middle east as well, many areas will cease production before the middle east does, mexico is already experiencing decline for some time now. Lets not forget the tar sands and oil shales of good old Canada, when prices come up more, you’ll probably here a whole lot more about that again. Things kind of dropped off in that area when prices dropped. So, you can come to the conclusion, you will be working in barren wastelands where it is either artic chill, or hotter than the devil’s pants.</p>

<p>Yeah, the only jobs you’ll find in the north east are gas specialization jobs, which will be jobs for senior level guys. Note, they don’t tend to pay your travel or hotel stays in the northeast, since you are working with natural gas, hence not as rewarding as oil. You won’t be given as many perks, but the job will definately be less stressful, and you won’t be in the middle of nowhere. You might actually get the chance to have a life, who would have thought that, a life as a petroleum engineer, haha.</p>

<p>Make no mistake, Oil companies are STILL hiring and offering top-dollar for engineers. While recruitment targets are lower than what they were a few years ago, there are still open slots.</p>

<p>Majors:</p>

<p>Meche/ChemE all the way. MechEs/ChemEs will easily get hired within the industry and in some cases are preferred to PetroEs due their versatility. From my experience in the industry and recruiting, a MechE/ChemE can get any job a PetroE applies for. In fact most of the engineers working right now usually have a MechE or ChemE degree. </p>

<p>The big Petroleum engineering “sectors” are Drilling, Production and Reservoir Engineering and as I said earlier, a mechE/chemE will have no trouble competing for these jobs. Now the key is that you have to ask specifically to hired as one these core engineers. By default, most non PetroEs are defaulted to Facilities Engineering, which isn’t bad at all but within this industry the money is closest to the oil. My advice is to get an internship within Production or Reservoir Engineering and once you have that experience, you can pretty much call yourself a PetroE.</p>

<p>

The recruitment market in 2009 is not even remotely comparable to 2005-2008.</p>

<p>

False. It’s very hard to get hired into these positions without internship experience in 2009. Only when there was a dearth of proper PetE majors was it very easy to jump into these positions.</p>

<p>I’ll be perfectly honest. I’m am by NO means a petroleum eng person. Just a person trying to help. Here’s what I have heard/know.</p>

<p>Fact 1. The salaries for Petroleum engineers are the best among the other specialties. They get payed TOP dollar. As someone else has mentione its like 85k or something right out of college. CRAZY amounts of money for a 23 year old kid. </p>

<p>Fact 2. I have been told this by a Pet eng myself. There are two “types” of work that you could go into. One of them is to be the guy sitting in the office somewhere in the south like texas. They typically do the boring type of work and aren’t payed quite as much(although when we’re talkin 85k as the average who gives a rats butt about a phrase as “not quite as much”) as the other type I’m about to explain. The other type is where you go out onto the platforms themselves and spend months at a time out there. They get payed more and do the “exciting” stuff but have a LOT less stable life. So if you plan on settling down then that is a concern you need to have. </p>

<p>My assumption 1. Getting work should be relatively easy. I mean look at the oil crisis we’re in. There won’t be many job opportunities because its so specialized but there aren’t many people to fulfill the positions to begin with. So the open positions will be low but you have a good shot at getting any of them. </p>

<p>My assumption 2. I agree with the other posters in the fact that the U.S. is drilled all over the place. There could be a lot of work in the gulf but Democrats oppose drilling there for god knows what reason. So I would think that the amount of available work outside the U.S. would FAR surpass the available work here. They would be in places that are FAR from “torist locations”. So a rough, non-stable life seems a reasonable bet to me (unless you sit in the office of course). But if you plan on living the bachelors life until your 30 or whatever then that would be great. You would go have a blast all over the world and make tons fo money(as mentioned it would be hard but certainly fun). So if you save up while out there, you can have a very comfortable egg to sit on when you feel like settling down, after finishing the funnest times of your life. Have fun and then settle down comfortably. Sounds good to me :)</p>