I’m curious about maybe going into petroleum engineering, but I have no idea where to look for good programs. Does anyone have any suggestions on decent schools and programs offering petrol engineering majors?
Thanks!
UT-Austin! 
Thanks! That was one of the first schools to come up when I was researching, it looks great there. Haha they have some pretty hefty tuition for out of state though. Oh well that’s to be expected.
The top 19 schools with ABET accredited petroleum engineering, listed alphabetically:
Colorado School of Mines
Louisiana State University and A&M College
Marietta College
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Montana Tech of the University of Montana
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
Pennsylvania State University
Texas A&M University
Texas Tech University
The University of Kansas
The University of Tulsa
University of Alaska Fairbanks
University of Houston
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
University of Oklahoma
University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas of the Permian Basin
University of Wyoming
West Virginia University
There may be a few others in the process of seeking ABET accreditation.
Wow thanks! I’ll definately do some research on them.
Owen, Penn State recently sent a letter out to students in PE discussing the deterioration of the job market due to the drop in oil prices. Have a good backup plan
Why Petroleum Engineering? My husband is a chemical engineer and has been employed in the petroleum industry since graduation he says petroleum energy is a dying industry. He would say go chemical engineering you can always work in the petroleum field or any other field.
Thanks for the advice. I’m kind of confused though because alot of people say it’s a shrinking industry but then the bureau of labor statistics projects faster than normal growth.
My advice would be to try talking with people actually working in the industry. Not sure that the governmental agency is really in touch with what is actually happening in the industry. BP just announced huge layoffs for upstream engineers.
No one can truly predict the future. The BLS clearly just thinks that, in the estimation, petroleum jobs are expected to increase over the next 10 years. Of course that 10 year outlook is from 2014 to 2024, so it’s entirely possible that the projected growth is based on 2014 data, which is obviously before the bottom fell out of the petroleum market.
Of course regardless of this fact, the (developed) world is still set to (slowly) move away from hydrocarbons. How fast that will actually happen is anyone’s guess. It might be 10 years or it might be 50 years. No one really knows.
Thanks for the advice, maybe I could do mechanical engineering at a petrol school and try to overlap classes to have more flexibility. How hard would a double major be since the two fields have a lot of overlap.
There’s no need to double major. There rarely is. The fact is, there are lots of mechanical engineers working in the petroleum industry.
The industry grows and shrinks with oil prices.
http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart
From the above, you can make pretty good guesses about when the oil industry and its employment were growing and when they were shrinking.
I feel like tons of people are into petroleum engineering just because that profession pays so well, even with just a bachelors degree…
@Studious99 I definitely see the pay as an incentive, but I also find the oil industry quite interesting and I like the type of work they do, along with the large amount of traveling.