<p>Structural, Petroleum, Aerospace, etc.?</p>
<p>After looking at a lot of the starting salaries for Civil Engineers, I'm thinking I might want to specialize in something else. But, in the Houston area, what's the average starting salary for someone with a MS in Structural Engineering?</p>
<p>What's big in Houston? Petroleum engineering. Chemical engineering. Petroleum engineering. Civil engineering with structures. Petroleum engineering. Oh, did I mention Petroleum engineering?</p>
<p>Houston is the oil technology capital of the world. What Silicon Valley is to the world computer and Internet industries, Houston is to the oil industry.</p>
<p>Well, with the Johnson Space Center in Houston you can probably conclude that Aerospace Engineering is going to be big. I might also guess Electronics/Communications Engineering and possibly Nuclear Engineering would be pretty big within NASA. It's a hard competitive process for hiring at NASA though.</p>
<p>Aerospace, Petro, Chemical, and Nuclear. 90 miles Southeast of Houston they are building a new nuclear power plant complex. You can look it up here <a href="http://www.stpnoc.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.stpnoc.com/</a> . My dad has a couple of friends working on it but he manages several non-nuclear power plants in Florida from downtown Houston.</p>
<p>As far as I know, there's still plenty of untapped/undiscovered petroleum, but some people conjecture differently. I also hear that Petroleum Engineers have less-than-desirable working conditions. Or could I just go work downtown for an energy company?</p>
<p>As sakky mentioned, anything related to the oil industry is big in Houston, which means petroleum and chemical engineering. NASA also hires a lot of aerospace and electrical engineers, but it's quite a competitive process.</p>
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As far as I know, there's still plenty of untapped/undiscovered petroleum,
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<p>Undiscovered? Maybe not. Whatever big 'elephant' fields are to be found are almost certainly either in the deep ocean, or in environmentally sensitive places like the Arctic/Antarctic. Either way, it would be difficult to explore in these areas. No doubt some giant finds are still to be found under the oceans, but probably hundreds of miles out at sea, where it is presently prohibitively expensive to explore. But the field of PetE is constantly chipping away at the costs of exploration so someday, those fields will be economically viable.</p>
<p>However, 'untapped' is a different story. "Exhausted" fields typically still have 2/3 of their original petroleum left in them. It's just that that 2/3 is hard to get out because it's tightly encased inside the rock. However, new production techniques, notably steam and chemically based procedures, are able to wring more and more petroleum out of reservoirs. So the world will still be able to "find" plenty more petroleum by simiply reworking old fields with these new procedures. </p>
<p>What many people don't seem to understand about the nature of the petroleum industry is that the amount of "reserves" available in the world is not a fixed quantity. Rather, it depends on the price of oil, which is intimately dependent on economics. There are fewer "reserves" of oil when the price if $10 a barrel than when it is $70 a barrel simply because a higher price of oil means that more oil is profitable to produce. Reservoirs that are uneconomic to produce at $10 a barrel are highly profitable at $70 a barrel and thus become part of "reserves". Hence, reserve calculations are highly dynamic. What that also means is that whenever oil becomes scarce, the price of oil increase, which then spurs companies to find more reservoirs or to use technology to squeeze more out of existing reservoirs. Thus there really is no fixed "quantity" of petroleum, there is only a quantity that companies are economically incentivized to find and produce, given the price of oil and the available technology. If oil was to shoot up to $200 a barrel, then companies would be incentivized to head to the deep ocean to explore for oil. </p>
<p>The truth is, the world has been "running" out of oil ever since the oil industry was started in the late 1800's. Even back in those days, people were warning about the "end" of oil without a proper appreciation of the economic aspects of the industry. For example, in the early 1900's, studies showed that the world only had about 20 years of "reserves". It's a hundred years later, and the world still has about 20 years of "reserves". How is that possible? When reserves started to decline, the price of oil increased, which spurred companies to find more reserves. It's like saying that I have 5 days worth of food in my refrigerator, so on day 6, I will starve. No, what it really means is that on day 4, you will go to the supermarket to buy more food. When food is running low, you are incented to buy food. Similarly, when oil reserves run low (and oil prices therefore increase), that spurs companies to find more reserves. </p>
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I also hear that Petroleum Engineers have less-than-desirable working conditions. Or could I just go work downtown for an energy company?
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<p>Well, the conditions are bad because PetE's LIKE it that way, because the money is better that way. I will be the first to tell you that life on an offshore platform sucks. But it does pay very well. Especially if you are sent overseas on an expatriate pay package. </p>
<p>Sure, you could just work in a comfortable air-conditioned office. But you'll probably be thinking of all of the money that the guys offshore are making. There is also an unmistakeable 'cool' factor in saying that you've worked offshore. i suppose it's something similar to soldiers who get sent to the field for battle. Obviously battle sucks. But at least they get to come back and talk about their experiences in the field, something that the office workers can never do. In the oil industry, one of the most accusatory questions you will ever hear is "Have you ever been offshore?', and if the answer is no, then you will probably lose whatever credibility you had, similar to how soldiers don't respect people who have never been to battle.</p>
<p>Sakky, many PetE's don't like the conditions. The working hours are long and hard, sometimes ranging from 60-80 hours a week. The conditions are not ideal, often you are in hot/humid environments. You may have to travel alot, sometimes staying in offshore rigs or even foreign rigs for months or years at a time. The job market is often unstable, firms will start and end here and there and your job is not always secure.</p>
<p>I'm not saying it's a bad business, b/c it does pay very well..especially right out of college. But you make it sound like the industry is the best possible to go into. Maybe this is b/c of personal bias?</p>
<p>I agree, it's kind of like doing a lot of business travel for your job. At first, it sounds cool to be paid to fly all over the country, and your friends might be impressed because they're stuck in their cubicle all day, but after a few months, you'll probably wish you could go back to that cube.</p>
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I'm not saying it's a bad business, b/c it does pay very well..especially right out of college. But you make it sound like the industry is the best possible to go into. Maybe this is b/c of personal bias
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<p>Nah, heck no, I wouldn't say that it is the "best possible" to go into, and certainly not because of personal bias. If we really wanted to talk about what the best possible industry is to enter right out of college, I would say it's to go to a management consulting firm like McKinsey, or to a lesser extent, go work for investment banking. The truth is, consulting and banking are proven ways to accelerate your career in a way that engineering (sadly) can't. It's become something of a running joke at MIT that many of the best engineering students, especially in EECS, will inevitably turn down a slew of engineering offers to go to consulting or banking. It's almost tragicomic. </p>
<p>Put another way. Consultants and bankers work hard, but no harder than the PetE's do at the rigsite. Their working conditions are far safer and far more comfortable, as they get to sit in nice clean air-conditioned offices all the time. Consultants, and to a lesser extent IB's get to travel a lot, and to far far more interesting and glamorous places than PetE's do. For example, I know a guy who's a consultant who in the last few years has been sent all over Northern Europe, including France, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, the Low Countries, and Ireland. Petroleum engineers get to go to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Let's be honest - which trip would you rather take? Consultants and bankers (especially bankers) tend to make more than PetE's do. And of course, like I said, there's the unmistakeable career acceleration factor. Consider the networking aspect - for as they say, business is often times not about what you know than about WHO you know. Consulting and banking experience lets you meet and network with plenty of businesspeople. Working as a PetE lets you network with other petroleum engineers, with geologists, and with uneducated roughnecks. Consulting experience can vault you into management. Investment banking experience opens up the world of private equity, hedge funds, and VC firms to you. In contrast, a PetE (or any kind of engineer) can easily find himself mired as an engineer for decades. Now, if you don't care about advancement and you just want to work as an engineer, then that's no problem, but if you ever hope to advance, then the truth is, engineering is not as fast of a career path as consulting and banking are.</p>
<p>chem e is also really big. there are chemical plants everywhere in the greater houston area.</p>
<p>The chemical companies hire more than chem e's and petroleum engineers. I know mech e's, physics majors, and computer science majors who are all employed by oil companies in Houston.</p>
<p>When you look at salaries in Houston, keep in mind that cost of living is much lower in Houston than in other major cities. In particular, suburban housing is cheap.</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, the friends I have whose parents worked for oil companies have been sent to Nigeria and Indonesia, but not to Kuwait and other Middle Eastern countries.</p>
<p>I grew up in Houston and as the others have told you,</p>
<p>ChemE and PetroE rules the Bayou City.</p>