Posted on 01/21/2012 7:59:10 PM PST by SeekAndFind
While millions of college grads look forlornly into the worst U.S. job market in decades, Emily Woner pretty much guaranteed herself one of America's best-paid post-graduate jobs before she ever set foot on campus.
Spurred by an early interest in following her father's footsteps into the oil sector, Woner secured a post-high school internship with Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy Corp.
After summers spent riding seismic trucks in the Barnett shale, designing water pipelines in east Texas and helping model oil reservoirs in Wyoming, she's now a 22-year-old senior at the University of Tulsa waiting to take a job in one the country's most sought-after professions: petroleum engineering.
"I'm really lucky. In my class, a lot of us are already committed to companies," Woner said.
Luck has little to do with it. Energy companies are racing to exploit America's vast shale gas and oil fields, the increasing discoveries of which has upended markets and sparked the biggest drilling boom in generations.
While Wall Street slashes the kind of banking and trading positions that were once the most coveted for top graduates, energy firms can't hire fast enough for the technical jobs that have been all but overlooked for a generation.
The shale boom has run into many obstacles: environmental concerns from earthquakes to water safety, a lack of needed materials, and logistical bottlenecks.
But the shortage of specialty engineers may prove one of the most vexing. Poaching is rife and supplies are short, putting a premium on industry veterans who know how to get the most value out of wells that can cost tens of millions of dollars to drill.
Oil companies have seen the squeeze coming for years, and -- to a degree -- the job market has responded. Bachelor's degrees in petroleum engineering trebled to over 750 since 2001.
But industry officials and analysts say it is likely still not enough for companies to maintain their ambitious growth in North American shale oil plays, Canada's oil sands, deepwater offshore Brazil, post-war Iraq and other frontiers.
At least 40 percent of the globe's petroleum engineers are expected to retire in the coming decade, according to top industry recruiters. A generation lost to the 1980s oil bust leaves a thin cadre of mid-career professionals to take up the slack until incoming 20-somethings get up to speed.
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I remember the geology majors in the 80s - oil bottomed out at about $9 a barrel - who couldn’t find a job ANYWHERE close to their area of study ... times change!
But I was a promised a good job too if I majored in Ethnic Studies!
But it also means Obama will be your boss. :/
“But I was a promised a good job too if I majored in Ethnic Studies!”
It’s good if you plan on making cupcakes for Occupiers.
McDonalds in the Bakken Shale area of ND and MT are paying $18/hr just to get someone to work. So there’s maybe hope there for English majors too.
She decided to major in History. Dumb idea. Really a tremendous waste of money.
However, after just a few months on campus she decided to change her major. She is now three years into the study of Third World Women's Literature, or some such crap.
BTW: I use this young lady as an object lesson for my kids. I’m very blunt. I say, “Study something practical, and I will pay for college. However, if I decide that you are not pursuing something practical, and I will stop paying. Choose wisely.”
She was probably listening to some libtard professors pompously sniffing that a liberal f@rts degree would broaden her mind and would be the big ticket to a wonderful career of her choosing.
Yea but if you don’t already live in ND then finding a place to live is harder than finding the job.
And you paid state tuition!
Yes, it's an Environmental Science school, but paper engineering involves cutting down trees— made the tree huggers mad at every turn!
Quick trivia: by size, I think ESF is the largest school in the country owning tons of acres in the Adirondacks and the Wanakena Ranger school at Cranberry Lake.
I posted this on another thread on a similar topic today. The story of the young lady who is in high demand as a petroleum engineer is contrasted with the post of another freeper who notes that years ago someone graduating with a degree in petroleum engineering could not get a job in his field because economic conditions were different. Sometimes kids pick one field to major in because market research at the time they’re freshmen indicates that that major will lead to a great job. Then conditions change.
The current crop of unemployed graduates may be unemployed because they studied history or Ethnic Women’s Literature, but they might just have signed up for something useful four or five years ago, only to see that the world changed abruptly when they were two or three years into a program. Four years ago it looked like a business degree would be valuable, but the Great Crash terminated that idea. In the last two years a lot of kids were told they could get jobs as medical coders, and they invested in coding courses, but now the field is overrun and they can’t get jobs.
So don’t be too hard on them; they’re not all Occupy morons.
LOL!
As a recent retiree from Devon Energy, I can tell you that newly minted petroleum engineering graduates are getting up to $100k per year and petroleum land management graduates up to $85k per year.
“Study something practical, and I will pay for college. However, if I decide that you are not pursuing something practical, and I will stop paying.”
I wish we could let you manage the Pell Grant program - that philosophy might make it almost worthwhile.
(Don’t call me a RINO. I said almost.)
My brother has a degree in Ocean Engineering from Texas A & M. He works at A & M doing all their computer stuff.
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