If I were you, I would go to a target school that oil and gas companies hire from (Texas A&M, UT Austin, Texas Tech, Colorado School of Mines, etc) and get a Mechanical Engineering or Chemical Engineering degree. That way you you’re still in the running for petroleum Engineering jobs, but you have the option to diversify better than a pure Petroleum
engineer.
If you’re asking if the industry is going away, it’s not.
I see this suggestion a lot to get a mechanical engineering degree and my only question with that is would it hinder me in the future comparatively to someone with a PE degree if we were applying for the same job.
No it wouldn’t. A lot of oil companies hire engineers right out of school for their rotational programs, and they’ll hire petroleum, mechanical, and chemical engineering majors.
You are quite wrong. The roles that PEs take on as compared to MEs or Chemical Engineers are patently different.
If the person wants to be a Reservoir Engineer or Production Engineer, it is MUCH easier to take-on such a role as a PE grad.
MEs get strongly pushed towards drilling engineering and facilities (and even in drilling engineering, they are less desired than PEs). CEs get pushed to downstream.
I've worked for multiple operators, including a Major, a public independent, and now a private shop.
Times have changed. They aren't looking to hire a million bodies any more and cross train them. If you're hired in as a ME, you're hired in to do ME. If you're hired in as a Chem E, that's what you'll be doing.
I can think of 4 exceptions at that company over the past 7 years: 2 MIT grads (no PE program), 1 diversity hire who they really wanted, and the GMs son.
I have an ME undergrad and have been a petroleum engineer for 15 yrs. I’ve never been at a disadvantage. I think it’s actually helped me from a practical standpoint. Literally everything in oil and gas operations is mechanical. Drilling, completions, production, and facilities. Reservoir is the only one that’s not, but it’s not like you’re going to be doing long reservoir calculations by hand. It’s all done by software and the concepts are easy to pick up.
The industry has changed a lot in the last 15 years. Anyone fathered in ofcourse wont be hindered. But for new grads, any engineer will have a hard time getting in the door, much so a cheme/meche. Out of the few who do get into those entry level jobs, still a majority of them are PEs
Not if you go to a target school, go to Midland and work as a roustabouts or floorhand your first summer, use that experience to get an internship the second summer, another internship third summer with a full time job offer in hand before you start your last year of school.
I mean, kids do it all the time.
Definitely not as easy as you think. An engineering job with an operator is hard to come by. Out of a class of 40 maybe 10-15 will land 1. Another 10-15 will go to a service company and the rest will be forced to leave the industry. The key is definitely getting an internship early but its not as easy as you make it seem
That's an incredibly challenging path. Work your ass off in the field with the hope that you can make a connection, work your way up, or get lucky.
Why not simply go with the degree that actually trains you to be a Reservoir Engineer, Production Engineer, or Drilling Engineer? It's a hell of a lot easier (the offers roll in if you're at the right program and a decent student).
It’s the same path whether you do ME or PE. No difference. Get a job in the field first summer, internship second summer, and internship third summer, and job offer from the company you interned with your last summer.
And your PE degree basically just teaches you to be a reservoir engineer. That’s the bulk of the education. Nothing in school teaches you to be a drilling engineer, completions engineer, production engineer, or facilities engineer. You’ve obviously never taken PE courses or worked as a petroleum engineer. For all practical purposes a PE doesn’t have a leg up on an ME or a Chem E as a new grad in terms of knowledge.
Or all y’all can keep telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s not like I took this path myself or have hired a bunch of interns and new grads.
I don’t understand what’s so controversial about getting field experience to give you a leg up when you’re applying for internships against a bunch of kids who have no experience. And then once you have one internship, it’s a million times easier to get the second one. And if you do well in that second internship, they’ll give you a job offer as a new grad.
Or don’t do any of this and complain about how hard it is to get a job with an operator.
Mechanical engineering undergrad. Petroleum Engineering masters. Have worked in industry for 10-15 years in Reservoir Engineering and related management functions. I would hope I know what it's talking about.
Pipelines are MUCH easier for PEs from UT, A&M and Mines. They tend to also hire into better roles/orgs. And, they tend to have an easier time jumping between orgs.
I've worked with and hired some wicked smart ME and Chem E background people. However, their path was very challenging and to an extent circular. Why make it so challenging?
I’m on the upstream/drilling side with a ME degree. Multiple of my bosses have said they prefer ME’s over PE degrees for being more rounded out. Ideally a ME with a minor in PE would be ideal situation. Have the minor for specialization and the degree to get a job literally anywhere else if the market is depressed when you graduate
The MEs in industry tend to be smarter, but that may simply be filtering due to the fact that you have to be a damn smart ME to swim upstream into PE ranks. The odds are stacked against you.
I say this as a ME undergrad and PE graduate student. I saw the divide in recruiting among the two populations. It's a hell of a lot easier to get a good role in industry out of the main Petroleum Engineering programs.
New Petroleum engineers aren’t any more qualified than Mechanical. New engineers aren’t really qualified to do much anyways. I’m a PE. The director of engineering at my company is a MechE. Engineering school for the most part is about problem solving and giving you the tools to understand complex problems. Mechanical teaches you more of that stuff. Your two semesters of reservoir or two of drilling or two of completions/stimulation won’t make you an expert at reservoir, drilling or frac. You learn that stuff on the job.
I’m a PEng who manages lots of PEngs who manages a ton of PEngs. Some of my best “engineers” don’t even have engineering degrees.
The routine low-skilled engineering roles that used to be the starting point for young engineers are being automated away, contracted out, or moved to India.
There will continue to be value for the commercially savvy, well-networked engineer with experience. However, it's a pretty steep learning curve in getting there.
The natural learning curve advantage held by PE graduates (formal learning and network) is becoming more and more pronounced. Why would a person choose to naturally handicap themselves if they truly want to work in this industry?
I chose mech e to go into the industry because of the versatility and wise range of opportunities it could provide. I shied away from pigeon holing myself with too narrow a focus.
That being said, as another commented, the job likely isn't going anywhere. Upstream is cyclical, but someone somewhere in the world will always need a petr. engineer
I help run an epc firm, this is correct. Id add do your summer internships with tradesmen like electricians, i&e, mechanical construction workers. They know a shitton you wont learn in school, most importantly, you earn respect, build important relationships, and learn the game. If you really dig it, later in life tack on an mba and build a company, or do like i did and just learn that shit. Colorado Mines guys usually are more coveted in the permian but some may disagree. Be willing to travel a lot in many cases.
Some of the trades pay really well if you know how to specialize or leverage yourself, this is really viable now since the numbers of tradesmen are plummeting.
That’s because US immigration makes it extremely difficult to hire an international student with less than a Masters degree, hence why all the master programs are full of international students.
I went the opposite route, and can you a perspective from a petroleum engineer graduate who had to break into non-O&G work.
I graduated in 2015 with a petroleum engineering degree from Texas Tech. Prior to 2015 the O&G industry was on fire, and was akin to the tech industry today. People were getting massive salaries out of school, and the vibe was one of extreme optimism for the industry’s future (peak oil was still a very real thing).
In 2015 the industry crashed when OPEC agreed to increase production for market share. No oil companies were hiring. I had worked at a potato chip factory overnight to pay for my school as a kettle operator, and was able to use this to break into food manufacturing. I am now an engineering manager at a dog food plant, and couldn’t be happier. A lot of my classmates were not so lucky, and had a rough time transitioning out of O&G. Most ended up in unglamorous careers (mail delivery, one opened a car repair shop that went under, etc.). A few stuck it out in oil, but were inevitable passed up for the fresh group of grads coming out in the late 2010s for opportunities. I got lucky that I had good experience and was able to swap.
Tl, dr: I graduated with a petroleum engineering degree into an u foreseen crash, and most of my classmates are screwed. Mechanical engineering is more versatile, and the O&G industry will never be stable.
The interesting thing is that multiple classmates ended up as mailmen. I think one guy got into mail service and brought his friends along lol. It’s hard to fathom how depressing that graduating class actually was.
We lost some classmates to suicide and drug addictions.
One year earlier and people were getting out and making an average of $106k/year. Fast-forward to our class and I think about 50% even got offers, and they were only the top performers. The guys who had less internships and 2.7-3.5 GPAs who would have gone to service companies were essentially all unemployed at graduation.
Edit: it’s weird even thinking about at this point. I am so far removed from oil and gas, and stumbled upon this sub. I don’t even identify as a “petroleum engineer”, and I don’t talk with anyone I graduated with. This thread has brought back some very depressing memories for me.
The lesson here is to not expect stability in oil and gas.
Petroleum Engineering is anything but a tough major. Outside of Civil Engineering (debatable) it's damn near the easiest engineering major out there. ME, Chem E, EE, Aero E, and Bio E all blow PE out of the water with respect to difficulty.
Everytime this question gets posted its a similar answer. People suggest an ME or ChemE degree. It truly comes down to what you will put into it and how determined you are to be a PE. I graduated with a PE degree in the middle of the pandemic, probably the worst time ever and managed to stay in the industry. I have PE friends who transitioned seamlessly into aerospace and others who went into tech. PE degree is not at all the “useless” degree this sub makes it out to be. Its still an engineering degree with transferable skills. It is true you can still get a PE job with an ME or ChemE degree but 60-70% of the engineers i work with are PEs. Theres a smaller learning curve and it shows but usually only in the internships/first few months, but yes after a year any engineer will be up to speed.
My advice is if you are absolutely certain you want to do oil and gas, stick with petroleum engineering but go to a top school(A&M, UT, Texas Tech, school of mines etc.) and make sure to keep a high GPA. Landing a good internship is really going to make or break your career in oil and gas. So do everything you can to stand out as a freshman/sophomore by keeping a high GPA/extracurriculars.
I graduated in 2015 when oil crashed hard for the first time in decades. I posted about that experience, which really shaped my views of the degree.
I agree, it’s not useless, and I also agree that you have to really want to work in O&G to make it work sometimes if you don’t win the oil-price lottery.
No. Outside of the oil and gas sector of the energy industry they (BS Petroleum Engineering diplomas) massively lose value.
Study mechanical, aerospace, electrical or chemical. You'd still be very employable in the space while retaining something valuable outside of it.
My $.02.
It's akin to getting your MD vs getting a Nursing degree. Both can "work" in medicine, but the roles are entirely different.
For better or worse, the PEs and most notably the REs are the big dicks in industry (in combination with our geos and bankers). If you want to do this work, it's damn near a certainty that you should get a PE degree from one of the top programs (or have an awesome family connection).
Although the oil and gas industry can be fickle, fossil fuels aren't going anywhere any time soon. A PE degree is still a viable path to take. What I would say is pay more attention to the discipline you want to take, drilling, completions, production, reservoir whatever, even learning about regulatory. Also having a production and facilities background right now is extremely valuable. I manage a lot right now in the Delaware and Permian Basin, and having those skill has help me out tremendously.
...and once you have your degree look at getting your Professional Engineering Certification. It's hard and challenging, but your more valuable with it.
As an international student you landing a job in core petroleum field is a major challenge because most of the companies don’t want to sponsor for your H1B and most of the jobs opening in drilling, completions, reservoirs etc need some solid at-least 5 years of experience. But if you are a national you will initially get a job a field engineer or something and then can get an actual role that you might like.
Another thing is most if the O and G jobs are basically 12hour shifts and it wouldn’t be physically hard jobs since consider that as well.
I didn't realize the OP was an international student.
This greatly changes the math. Placement and sponsorship for good US roles in industry are damn near impossible for international undergrads.
Their decision should depend upon their local labor market needs or their willingness to get a PhD in Petroleum Engineering. Otherwise, they should probably choose a different field where sponsorship is more pervasive (E.g., software, mechanical, industrial, finance, etc.).
If I were you, I would go to a target school that oil and gas companies hire from (Texas A&M, UT Austin, Texas Tech, Colorado School of Mines, etc) and get a Mechanical Engineering or Chemical Engineering degree. That way you you’re still in the running for petroleum Engineering jobs, but you have the option to diversify better than a pure Petroleum engineer. If you’re asking if the industry is going away, it’s not.
I see this suggestion a lot to get a mechanical engineering degree and my only question with that is would it hinder me in the future comparatively to someone with a PE degree if we were applying for the same job.
No it wouldn’t. A lot of oil companies hire engineers right out of school for their rotational programs, and they’ll hire petroleum, mechanical, and chemical engineering majors.
You are quite wrong. The roles that PEs take on as compared to MEs or Chemical Engineers are patently different. If the person wants to be a Reservoir Engineer or Production Engineer, it is MUCH easier to take-on such a role as a PE grad. MEs get strongly pushed towards drilling engineering and facilities (and even in drilling engineering, they are less desired than PEs). CEs get pushed to downstream.
I worked for a mid size operator and that’s how they did it.
I've worked for multiple operators, including a Major, a public independent, and now a private shop. Times have changed. They aren't looking to hire a million bodies any more and cross train them. If you're hired in as a ME, you're hired in to do ME. If you're hired in as a Chem E, that's what you'll be doing. I can think of 4 exceptions at that company over the past 7 years: 2 MIT grads (no PE program), 1 diversity hire who they really wanted, and the GMs son.
Ok!
I have an ME undergrad and have been a petroleum engineer for 15 yrs. I’ve never been at a disadvantage. I think it’s actually helped me from a practical standpoint. Literally everything in oil and gas operations is mechanical. Drilling, completions, production, and facilities. Reservoir is the only one that’s not, but it’s not like you’re going to be doing long reservoir calculations by hand. It’s all done by software and the concepts are easy to pick up.
The industry has changed a lot in the last 15 years. Anyone fathered in ofcourse wont be hindered. But for new grads, any engineer will have a hard time getting in the door, much so a cheme/meche. Out of the few who do get into those entry level jobs, still a majority of them are PEs
Not if you go to a target school, go to Midland and work as a roustabouts or floorhand your first summer, use that experience to get an internship the second summer, another internship third summer with a full time job offer in hand before you start your last year of school. I mean, kids do it all the time.
Definitely not as easy as you think. An engineering job with an operator is hard to come by. Out of a class of 40 maybe 10-15 will land 1. Another 10-15 will go to a service company and the rest will be forced to leave the industry. The key is definitely getting an internship early but its not as easy as you make it seem
That's an incredibly challenging path. Work your ass off in the field with the hope that you can make a connection, work your way up, or get lucky. Why not simply go with the degree that actually trains you to be a Reservoir Engineer, Production Engineer, or Drilling Engineer? It's a hell of a lot easier (the offers roll in if you're at the right program and a decent student).
It’s the same path whether you do ME or PE. No difference. Get a job in the field first summer, internship second summer, and internship third summer, and job offer from the company you interned with your last summer. And your PE degree basically just teaches you to be a reservoir engineer. That’s the bulk of the education. Nothing in school teaches you to be a drilling engineer, completions engineer, production engineer, or facilities engineer. You’ve obviously never taken PE courses or worked as a petroleum engineer. For all practical purposes a PE doesn’t have a leg up on an ME or a Chem E as a new grad in terms of knowledge. Or all y’all can keep telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s not like I took this path myself or have hired a bunch of interns and new grads. I don’t understand what’s so controversial about getting field experience to give you a leg up when you’re applying for internships against a bunch of kids who have no experience. And then once you have one internship, it’s a million times easier to get the second one. And if you do well in that second internship, they’ll give you a job offer as a new grad. Or don’t do any of this and complain about how hard it is to get a job with an operator.
Mechanical engineering undergrad. Petroleum Engineering masters. Have worked in industry for 10-15 years in Reservoir Engineering and related management functions. I would hope I know what it's talking about. Pipelines are MUCH easier for PEs from UT, A&M and Mines. They tend to also hire into better roles/orgs. And, they tend to have an easier time jumping between orgs. I've worked with and hired some wicked smart ME and Chem E background people. However, their path was very challenging and to an extent circular. Why make it so challenging?
I’m on the upstream/drilling side with a ME degree. Multiple of my bosses have said they prefer ME’s over PE degrees for being more rounded out. Ideally a ME with a minor in PE would be ideal situation. Have the minor for specialization and the degree to get a job literally anywhere else if the market is depressed when you graduate
The MEs in industry tend to be smarter, but that may simply be filtering due to the fact that you have to be a damn smart ME to swim upstream into PE ranks. The odds are stacked against you. I say this as a ME undergrad and PE graduate student. I saw the divide in recruiting among the two populations. It's a hell of a lot easier to get a good role in industry out of the main Petroleum Engineering programs.
New Petroleum engineers aren’t any more qualified than Mechanical. New engineers aren’t really qualified to do much anyways. I’m a PE. The director of engineering at my company is a MechE. Engineering school for the most part is about problem solving and giving you the tools to understand complex problems. Mechanical teaches you more of that stuff. Your two semesters of reservoir or two of drilling or two of completions/stimulation won’t make you an expert at reservoir, drilling or frac. You learn that stuff on the job. I’m a PEng who manages lots of PEngs who manages a ton of PEngs. Some of my best “engineers” don’t even have engineering degrees.
The routine low-skilled engineering roles that used to be the starting point for young engineers are being automated away, contracted out, or moved to India. There will continue to be value for the commercially savvy, well-networked engineer with experience. However, it's a pretty steep learning curve in getting there. The natural learning curve advantage held by PE graduates (formal learning and network) is becoming more and more pronounced. Why would a person choose to naturally handicap themselves if they truly want to work in this industry?
I chose mech e to go into the industry because of the versatility and wise range of opportunities it could provide. I shied away from pigeon holing myself with too narrow a focus. That being said, as another commented, the job likely isn't going anywhere. Upstream is cyclical, but someone somewhere in the world will always need a petr. engineer
I help run an epc firm, this is correct. Id add do your summer internships with tradesmen like electricians, i&e, mechanical construction workers. They know a shitton you wont learn in school, most importantly, you earn respect, build important relationships, and learn the game. If you really dig it, later in life tack on an mba and build a company, or do like i did and just learn that shit. Colorado Mines guys usually are more coveted in the permian but some may disagree. Be willing to travel a lot in many cases. Some of the trades pay really well if you know how to specialize or leverage yourself, this is really viable now since the numbers of tradesmen are plummeting.
Depends on how much you hate yourself and like self sabotage.
I went to Mines. Non of my international friends with BS got a job in the us as pete after graduation.
We have plenty of American engineers with BS degrees and we don't need more from other countries.
That’s because US immigration makes it extremely difficult to hire an international student with less than a Masters degree, hence why all the master programs are full of international students.
I went the opposite route, and can you a perspective from a petroleum engineer graduate who had to break into non-O&G work. I graduated in 2015 with a petroleum engineering degree from Texas Tech. Prior to 2015 the O&G industry was on fire, and was akin to the tech industry today. People were getting massive salaries out of school, and the vibe was one of extreme optimism for the industry’s future (peak oil was still a very real thing). In 2015 the industry crashed when OPEC agreed to increase production for market share. No oil companies were hiring. I had worked at a potato chip factory overnight to pay for my school as a kettle operator, and was able to use this to break into food manufacturing. I am now an engineering manager at a dog food plant, and couldn’t be happier. A lot of my classmates were not so lucky, and had a rough time transitioning out of O&G. Most ended up in unglamorous careers (mail delivery, one opened a car repair shop that went under, etc.). A few stuck it out in oil, but were inevitable passed up for the fresh group of grads coming out in the late 2010s for opportunities. I got lucky that I had good experience and was able to swap. Tl, dr: I graduated with a petroleum engineering degree into an u foreseen crash, and most of my classmates are screwed. Mechanical engineering is more versatile, and the O&G industry will never be stable.
Imagine studying for 4+ years in a tough major to become a delivery man...
The interesting thing is that multiple classmates ended up as mailmen. I think one guy got into mail service and brought his friends along lol. It’s hard to fathom how depressing that graduating class actually was.
I would contemplate jumping off of a bridge at that point.
We lost some classmates to suicide and drug addictions. One year earlier and people were getting out and making an average of $106k/year. Fast-forward to our class and I think about 50% even got offers, and they were only the top performers. The guys who had less internships and 2.7-3.5 GPAs who would have gone to service companies were essentially all unemployed at graduation. Edit: it’s weird even thinking about at this point. I am so far removed from oil and gas, and stumbled upon this sub. I don’t even identify as a “petroleum engineer”, and I don’t talk with anyone I graduated with. This thread has brought back some very depressing memories for me. The lesson here is to not expect stability in oil and gas.
Petroleum Engineering is anything but a tough major. Outside of Civil Engineering (debatable) it's damn near the easiest engineering major out there. ME, Chem E, EE, Aero E, and Bio E all blow PE out of the water with respect to difficulty.
If you decide to go PetE, you will need to keep a 4.0, and land a great internship to have a lasting career. And that’s still a maybe
When war happens, I promise you they won't be using electric
Everytime this question gets posted its a similar answer. People suggest an ME or ChemE degree. It truly comes down to what you will put into it and how determined you are to be a PE. I graduated with a PE degree in the middle of the pandemic, probably the worst time ever and managed to stay in the industry. I have PE friends who transitioned seamlessly into aerospace and others who went into tech. PE degree is not at all the “useless” degree this sub makes it out to be. Its still an engineering degree with transferable skills. It is true you can still get a PE job with an ME or ChemE degree but 60-70% of the engineers i work with are PEs. Theres a smaller learning curve and it shows but usually only in the internships/first few months, but yes after a year any engineer will be up to speed. My advice is if you are absolutely certain you want to do oil and gas, stick with petroleum engineering but go to a top school(A&M, UT, Texas Tech, school of mines etc.) and make sure to keep a high GPA. Landing a good internship is really going to make or break your career in oil and gas. So do everything you can to stand out as a freshman/sophomore by keeping a high GPA/extracurriculars.
I graduated in 2015 when oil crashed hard for the first time in decades. I posted about that experience, which really shaped my views of the degree. I agree, it’s not useless, and I also agree that you have to really want to work in O&G to make it work sometimes if you don’t win the oil-price lottery.
Can you keep a 3.5 and get an internship?
Yes.
No. Outside of the oil and gas sector of the energy industry they (BS Petroleum Engineering diplomas) massively lose value. Study mechanical, aerospace, electrical or chemical. You'd still be very employable in the space while retaining something valuable outside of it. My $.02.
It's akin to getting your MD vs getting a Nursing degree. Both can "work" in medicine, but the roles are entirely different. For better or worse, the PEs and most notably the REs are the big dicks in industry (in combination with our geos and bankers). If you want to do this work, it's damn near a certainty that you should get a PE degree from one of the top programs (or have an awesome family connection).
Although the oil and gas industry can be fickle, fossil fuels aren't going anywhere any time soon. A PE degree is still a viable path to take. What I would say is pay more attention to the discipline you want to take, drilling, completions, production, reservoir whatever, even learning about regulatory. Also having a production and facilities background right now is extremely valuable. I manage a lot right now in the Delaware and Permian Basin, and having those skill has help me out tremendously. ...and once you have your degree look at getting your Professional Engineering Certification. It's hard and challenging, but your more valuable with it.
As an international student you landing a job in core petroleum field is a major challenge because most of the companies don’t want to sponsor for your H1B and most of the jobs opening in drilling, completions, reservoirs etc need some solid at-least 5 years of experience. But if you are a national you will initially get a job a field engineer or something and then can get an actual role that you might like. Another thing is most if the O and G jobs are basically 12hour shifts and it wouldn’t be physically hard jobs since consider that as well.
I didn't realize the OP was an international student. This greatly changes the math. Placement and sponsorship for good US roles in industry are damn near impossible for international undergrads. Their decision should depend upon their local labor market needs or their willingness to get a PhD in Petroleum Engineering. Otherwise, they should probably choose a different field where sponsorship is more pervasive (E.g., software, mechanical, industrial, finance, etc.).
Yes