Hello,
I am a Junior at high school living in suburbs of Chicago and planning to get a petroleum engineering degree after school. But my biggest concerns are:
if I get a job in this field, what area (states) of US would I most likely get work in?
What are the chances, I will have to move out of Chicago Land Area to that state?
Can I stay in Chicago and still work from here?
My H is a petroleum engineer. He’s had jobs in Louisiana, Texas, Africa and Canada. He had other potential opportunities in California, Alaska and Pennsylvania. That was all with a single major oil company; there are other locations with different companies around the US. PEs can find work in most areas of the country and many places around the world but unfortunately the upper Midwest is not known for PE jobs. I’m not saying it’s impossible to stay in the Chicago area but you are severely limiting your opportunities if you do so. Some oil field jobs are rotational; for instance drilling service companies might offer a five weeks on/two weeks off schedule working offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. In that case you could live anywhere in your time off. Rotational jobs for new hires out of college are rare though. My H worked internationally on a rotational schedule for a while, but his company required at least five years experience before considering an employee for that kind of job.
I don’t want to tell you it definitely won’t work, but you should understand that Illinois is nowhere near the US oil field action and you will have many more opportunities if you are open to other areas.