They fire you at the first sign of trouble, you have no job security and its not like they pay better then any other competitive industry in relation to the jobs.
i.e. you can work on wall street, in finance, or whatever, for the same pay, and still know you will have a job in 5 years.
The energy companies created their own problems with none of the top guys ever retiring, and everyone coming up through the ranks getting laid off, every few years.
The energy industry wrote the blueprint on how to screw itself over and make sure its an undesirable field to work in.
I have an MBA, I also have enough common sense to know that the risk to reward working for one of those companies is crap.