<p>B. Hussein ain't gonna destroy the oil industry, he's gonna destroy biotech when he socializes healthcare and starts telling pharma companies how much to sell their drugs for.</p>
<p>But what would I know? I'm just a bitter American clinging to my guns and religion with antipathy towards those who aren't like me. 1415 days til the inauguration of Sarah Palin!!!!!</p>
<p>There will be no drugs in development if there is not money to be made. Obama is no fool. The MDs are the ones who need to worry, not the biotech companies. The things that are in development are mind blowing--they will extend life span, cure cancers and chronic diseases and eliminate genetic defects. For my money, this is the industry to be in. People in the right companies will be involved in amazing work and make big dollars.</p>
<p>Yeah, then they will become like most of the oil companies, and dictate your lifestyle. The money will go to their heads. Like Exxon and their 45.2 billion dollar profit last year. That is more than the gross domestic product of most small nations, lol.</p>
<p>Yeah, screw Exxon for making money. What a horrible thing! Maybe the Messiah will be able to take away all of their profits and give them to ACORN, or the DailyKos, or Moveon.org. (BTW, Exxon ain't doin too good right now)</p>
<p>That's how free markets work. If you don't like it, maybe you can move to the island paradise called Cuba.</p>
<p>lol, I never said I didn't like it, it was a joke. Chill out. We going to see how the free market works when health care is nationalized, lol. Oh, what a day that will be, lol.</p>
<p>^</p>
<p>I know, you are so right! Just look at France and the UK! Their health care sucks! Oh wait ... nvm.</p>
<p>Hold on buddy, were talking about what euro countries do. The Europeans always do everything top notch. Let me try and understand what you are saying. You want the same government who manages our crappy public schools that are behind nearly every industrialized country, who has yet to make significant improvements to our aging infrastructure, who borrows money that our children's, children's, children....... won't even pay back, who can't even manage themselves, the military, or anything for that matter, and who got us into the financial crisis in the first place to manage the health care system. Oh wait, our government is great, oh nvm. Well, I guess I will move my happy ass back to France.</p>
<p>what are the "high" oil salaries as an engineer? 150k ??</p>
<p>Depends. One can have a Petroleum Engineering degree and work as a drill site manager and pull in ~1500+/day (rare). I would not consider this "engineering work", however a fair amount of degree engineers do it.</p>
<p>In the domestic oil industry I suspect the vast majority of engineers make between 75-150k/year. Generally, engineers in the US make 25-30% more than engineers in Canada. Of course, even within "oil" there is a heirarchy. Drilling > Reservoir > Production > Facilities. And service companies engineers are paid on a per diem basis and can be anywhere in between based on bonuses and such.</p>
<p>so with a chemical engineering degree and a good (3.5++) GPA, how hard would it be to get a drilling job within a few years after graduation?</p>
<p>How hard? I don't know how to respond to that question. It's highly unlikely you'd be hired into a drilling position with a ChemE degree. You'd most likely have to get some form of production or service company experience before hiring into drilling. I do know Chemical/Mechanical engineers who work in drilling. They followed the route I just described. After working in upstream industry for several years it's almost irrelevant what your degree is.</p>
<p>Yeap, Mr. Payne, I couldn't have said that better myself. Starwars fan, a production engineer for a corporation like chevron, exxon, shell, will probably start out right under 70-80k range. Engineers with around 10 years experience should be making somewhere around 12-14k a month. Now keep in mind the engineers making that, are the ones that spent there first 5 years traveling getting experience on platforms offshore and what not. They refer to that as "fast tracking". A production engineer who doesn't opt for the traveling will never move up and will not be favored by managment. Like my uncle put it, if they give you an offer for a job, or ask you to take a job, you better do it. Because if you don't, you better like staying where you at for the rest of your career. I know of an engineer who got put on a offshore for 2 years, then the company. As soon as he was starting to adjust to the new assignment and actually started to like the time off. He was working 14 and 14, they gave him an offer to work an office job on land being a manager at a training facility. He took the job offer, because of what I was talking about earlier, now he doesn't care for it at all, because he has little time off. If you want to make really big money, it will be with smaller companies, drilling companies specifically, directional drilling to be precise. But it comes with a price. I know of drilling engineers that make 300000 plus, but they work 310 days out of the year, and that is away. I know one guy that has spent over 6 months away before, working in mexico. He gets paid substantialy, but I don't think the time away is worth it. You don't even have time to spend your money, when you only have about 4 days off a month. Or work three months then come in for a week or two. It takes its toll on everything, family, friends, just life in general. You need someone just to pay your bills while you are away. Not the best job in my opinion. You have to be a workaholic.</p>
<p>It is not really about gpa, as long as you have above a 2.75, some companies look for a 3.2 but that is the highest I've seen. Most bare minimum is a 2.75 though for internships. You would need intership experience and you getting that over a petroleum engineering student is pretty slim. They want people who are actually taking classes in the major, so they will be ready to hop on the rig and actually put their skills into action, not have to teach someone how to read well logs, or interpreting the formation evaluations. Doing drilling is the most stressful and arduous, I'm talking about staying up 20-30 hours at a time, getting four hours of sleep and doing it over again. You can compare it to a physician when they are in residency. They work the same way a drilling engineer would work. Every company does it different, but smaller ones will only have a select group of engineers, and that engineer usually runs the entire drilling rig byselves, so there is no relief. That is where petroleum engineers make the big money, but when you look at how they have to work, you understand why.</p>
<p>I don't know about you forever, but that stimulus package is scarying the **** out of me. It's supposed to support alt. NRG with billions of dollars.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>Scary stuff. Imagine a world where energy wasn't monopolized by oil. Ooooh. Just thinking about it gives me the goosebumps.</p>
<p>chanman: yess, I'm glad you agree with me... you seem like a smart kid. I know, it gives me the goosebumps, too. ****</p>
<p>First of all, have to say that oil industry pay is outstanding. I make like $10/hour more at my co-op than people I know at places like GE, defense contractors, utility companies, etc.</p>
<p>As to GPA, I think you definitely need higher than a 2.75 if you want to get in at one of the big companies. You need a 3.5 to get an interview at Exxon, and I know that my company will not allow any co-ops who fall below a 3.0 at school to return for additional rotations.</p>
<p>I've seen internships with Halliburton or was it Weatherford with a 2.75 gpa. I'm not saying the that is good, but you still can find a job. Yes, the big corporations want you to have a high B average or more. I mean you should be keeping your grades around a 3.0ish regardless.</p>
<p>If you are looking for a lot of opportunities, I would say go oil. Shell, Chevron and Conoco-Phillips all are constantly hanging around our school, recruiting mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineers. Funny thing is, only Conoco-Phillips actually has a decent presence in our state.</p>
<p>I got an summer internship setup with another large energy company in December (it starts in May), and the hourly is about $10 more than the offers that my friends have gotten (and they pay for me to live in one of the most beautiful areas in the country). Right now I think the energy industry is kind of dragging their feet, but in a couple of years they will start developing more technologies, so there should be a lot of opportunities. They are just sitting on tons of money and resources.</p>
<p>Edit: Also, beware of Schlumberger. I have never met a more miserable group of employees in my life. I went to their presentation about the company on campus, and they straight up told us that we should expect to work 12 hour days for weeks at a time with no breaks. Also, one of the presenters said it was "not a job for someone who has strong family ties". Seriously? I guess it was nice of them to be honest, but I can't see how they can possibly recruit when they present their company like that.</p>
<p>I do believe that Halliburton, Schlumberger, etc. do have lower requirements. I was going to post something about that, but I also figured that I would just make my post about the well-known companies like Exxon, Shell, Chevron, etc. Halliburton / Schlumberger is probably a whole another beast as well...pay is probably pretty decent but as the poster above noted, hours are probably much more worse. I'd guess that they pay interns / co-ops salaried.</p>
<p>MCS, what area are you headed to? I'm co-oping (downstream) right now through August, but I want to get some ideas on where I could go the following summer.</p>