Insider Info

When Jeanne Phene was in the fourth year of her engineering studies, she was very busy. She didn't have much time to think about the type of career she wanted.

"My sister was out in Calgary [in Alberta, Canada] and I had been out there to ski, so I knew Calgary was a fun place to be, and I polled all the smartest kids in my class and asked what they were doing and [petroleum engineering] was what they were all doing," says Phene. "So I just decided to give it a try for a couple of years... and go to grad school, but that didn't really happen."

This was just before the crash in the early '80s -- a time when oil prices were high and the industry was hopping. Phene had no trouble finding opportunities at that time.

Exploitation engineers like Phene find work where the oil is. In North America this is in places like Alberta and Texas, for example. But opportunities also abound worldwide. Exploitation engineers have the opportunity to see the world.

"Myself, I've never lived outside of Texas -- born here, lived here, never lived outside of Texas," says Jerome Schubert. He teaches petroleum engineering and has many years of experience as a drilling engineer.

"But there's a lot of opportunity to travel all over the world," says Schubert. "I do travel quite a bit -- visiting, but not living, in other places. But there's the opportunity to live all over."

"It's a very international business," agrees Tayfun Babadagli. He's a professor of petroleum engineering.

"If you work for many companies, like a major oil service company, chances are you move around," says Babadagli. "It may not be an advantage for some people, but you travel around, you meet different kinds of people, you deal with different cultures, and if you do [travel] you make more money."

Babadagli says petroleum engineers of all types should have mathematical and analytical reasoning abilities. It's also important to be able to visualize abstract concepts.

"You should be able to visualize many things because you're dealing with big uncertainty, unlike other engineering disciplines," says Babadagli. "Like civil engineers see the bridge or building or pipeline, or chemical engineers design power plants or any kind of chemical plant, but petroleum engineers deal with [things] underground, that you cannot see or touch. They're going more by visualizing the thing."

Schubert says exploitation engineers will become increasingly important as oil gets scarcer and harder to find.

"We've got to find more oil and increase the technology to produce it," says Schubert. "And the easy wells are done. We've got to continue to develop better ways to drill the well -- more efficient, more effective, safer.

"...In the '70s, if you got 25 or 30 percent of the oil in place -- ultimate recovery -- that was great," says Schubert. "Now at some reservoirs we've got the technology now where we're able to get 50 to 75 percent, and that's all through technology. And that's part of the exploitation [engineer's role] -- how do we get more out of it? Where do we need to place the wells to get more of it out?"

Schubert got into the oil industry because it seemed like a secure career path.

"I grew up in a little town in south Texas," he says. "The only two industries there were oil and agriculture, and I grew up on a farm and I figured the oil industry was more stable with more guaranteed income."

While the industry pays well, it's not always a secure source of income. That's because the oil industry goes in cycles.

"It's up and down with oil prices," says Schubert. "That's challenging and stressful. But then again the ups and downs make things a little bit exciting. Like, right now, it's up and companies are raiding each other for experienced engineers. When they do that it means salaries go up."

Technology allows exploitation engineers to do much of their work from an office. But there's no substitute for hands-on experience in the field, especially early in a career.

"If somebody wanted to get into [this career], they'd want to get into the oilfield in a summer student job, like maybe a gas plant operator or a pumper or something like that, because the young guys, they're not posted as often in the field as they used to be," says Phene.

"...So it's more important these days for young people to try and get out in the field and maybe try to work as a roustabout (laborer) or something like that just so they get a sense of how the people who run the fields think and work."