Is petroleum engineering a good field to go into right now?

[dingyin714]

Hi I am really interested in petroleum engineering right now but I have heard a few bad things about it. First, due to low oil prices the salary for petro engineers are getting lower and lower. Also, because of the fact that petro engineers make more money than other engineering jobs, tons of people are getting a degree in PE and competition has increased so much that a job right after college is not guaranteed anymore. What do you guys think about this? I have a pretty solid GPA and test score, what are some schools I can choose from? OU, LSU, TAMU?

[labegg]

According to my chemical engineer husband who has worked in the petroleum industry his entire career, it is a dying field. He would advise you to major in Chemical Engineering and have more options.

[milkweed]

Here’s an article that might be of interest to you: http://insideenergy.org/2015/02/13/falling-oil-prices-leave-petroleum-engineering-students-out-in-the-cold/

Is money your priority? Are you not worried about climate change and the future of our planet?

[ohiovalley16]

My school did not have Petroleum Engineering, but the oil & gas companies hired tons of grads from the ChemE program. That degree was more versatile and not tied to the fluctuating future of a single industry. Grads from that program went into everything from Big Chemical, to petroleum and energy, to process control in a major snack production facility, to major consulting firms.

[dingyin714]

@labegg That’s what I have been hearing. However, it’s not like we are running out of oil, in the long run it is still a money making field. That’s just my opinion…I’m not that interested in chemical engineering to be honest, what about civil?

[ohiovalley16]

Civil has a lot of flavors. Check out the ASCE site and the CE areas of research at schools that interest you.

[labegg]

Much of Petroleum Engineering is chemistry based. Are you interested in exploration side of the field and or the processing side or just earning good money? If money is the motivating factor - chemical engineering is one of the more lucrative subsets of engineering.

[billcsho]

The job market in this field is pretty bad this year. There may be laying off soon in the industry. My D is major in ChemE and she is a bit worry too. Not only the petroleum branch is going downhill, the merging of Dow with Dupont also hurt the job market in ChemE.

[dingyin714]

@billcsho @labegg @ohiovalley16 @milkweed I think I will apply to one school for petro engineering although civil is my top choice. I am looking at OU and LSU. How would you guys rank these two schools? Also, do you guys happen to know if oil companies are friendly when it comes to hiring non US citizens? I am an international student.

[NeoDymium]

I’ll re-link an old post from a PetE major that did a good job of outlining risks and benefits, in response to one other person who was considering PetE vs. ChemE. Keep in mind this was before the 2014 oil price bust.

I’m a Petroleum Engineering student at TTU. Since you asked about the only two majors at the top of the starting salary chart, I’ll make the right assumption you are taking a practical approach to a degree. From that perspective:

The only absolutely right answer to what career will pay the most next year, when you graduate, in 10 years, in 20 is this: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW. PERIOD.

The labor market is EXACTLY THAT: A MARKET. Playing the labor market is the exact same thing as playing the stock market. Except that to buy stock is the cost you’ve paid on graduation day. Opportunity, financial, personal, etc.

Now, with that in mind, do the stocks that are peaking today look like lucrative investments? Depends. But remember, the degrees that are paying a lot right now attract huge supply. If the demand doesn’t stay the same relative to the new supply the salary goes down (in general.)

That is what’s happening right now with PetE. Salaries are being driven down by the huge numbers of people, just like you, that read somewhere it had the highest paying starting salary and rushed into the degree. According to NACE, last year the average was 96K. This year it is 74K, a 20% drop. The BLS revised it’s growth prediction for the career downwards from last year. Next year? BUT, that all depends on how the supply and demand flux from year to year. Let’s say that by the time you graduate PetE pays the average engineering salary. Looking at it from that perspective; same pay, but…dirty work, little choice of geographical location, locations generally suck, impossible to raise a family, always away from home, no job security (see 70’s layoffs), huge responsibilities and stress, the chance (however small) that your degree will become completely meaningless at any time ( peak oil/ alternative energy, etc.) because if that happens your degree is so specialized that you can’t work any other job. Still sound like a good career? For 150k, the risks are worth it, but at 75K it’s a huge waste. Especially considering that in the oil industry truckers with criminal records and 2 weeks of training make 100k a year.

To answer your question you need to be able to predict how the supply of students and the demand for students is going to look when you graduate. That is much, much harder than you might think. There are huge sums of money at play here for both the industry and the universities. ANY information that you or I can obtain is almost guaranteed to be biased if not downright misinformation.

So back to my original claim: impossible to know. You are playing the market, so do research, be discerning about the information you obtain, and roll the dice. Anytime you choose a career that’s “hot” you are risking going into a bubble. It’s all a gamble, in the end, and if someone knows for sure what’s going to happen next year they sure as hell aren’t going to tell anyone else.