Energy, Brains Make for Hopeful Situation : Petroleum industry shows wisdom of encouraging scholars who may not pursue traditional oil-related careers.
The prospectors of oil were doing some prospecting for talent last week at the Ventura County Fairgrounds.
It was Energy Information Night, on which the local chapter of the American Petroleum Institute held an energy careers fair and honored several of its professional members for their accurate--and spill-free--deep water drilling.
The chapter also handed out $1,000 scholarship checks, as it does annually, to 16 local students. The winners, chosen by a committee led by Dick Miller of Clawson Petroleum Consultants Inc., could potentially do as much for our community as a new mineral discovery.
This was not a simple exercise in beating the bushes for future petroleum engineers. Among the planned college studies listed by this group of 4.0-average earners were elementary teaching, history, electrical engineering, bioengineering and medicine.
Sure, a few indicated they wanted to go into the oil business, and it made sense that students so inclined would apply; earlier in the nine-year history of these well-publicized awards, petroleum engineering was the focus.
But, according to Michele Tebeau, organizer of the awards ceremony, the chapter is now accepting applications from bright and needy students--period.
I interviewed several of the winners. One, Daniel Geis, a Santa Paula High School senior with a 4.15 grade-point average, proved a bit of a wag. Having determined that he wasn’t going into oil drilling, I asked him what he planned to do with an engineering degree. Wordlessly he pointed upward.
Space was also on the academic dance card of Michael Churney, a Westlake High School senior. Space and energy, specifically the way-out technology of hydrogen propulsion being considered by NASA for the planned National Aerospace Plane.
I was thinking how clever I was that I already knew BMW and Mazda were using the new technology--which is non-polluting--in sports cars. But I didn’t know about the rocket version until Churney mentioned it. Clean space travel. He found out about it at his part-time job at Rockwell. When he was a sophomore. Fifteen years old. Are you getting the picture?
You may be asking if the American Petroleum Institute chapter isn’t sort of shooting itself in the foot by aiding the careers of such kids. Well, there’s plenty of work for the folks in the traditional oil business to do even if we switch to machines powered by hydrogen, which is of course free.
It turns out that half of the oil America processes is used to manufacture consumer goods--everything from footballs to fertilizers to fake fur. A lot of the consumer goods made with oil, by the way, are recyclable. The other half gets poured into the gas tank. And the petroleum industry also purveys natural gas, which is used for power generating, heating and cooling. The dry stuff, as they call it, now accounts for more dollar sales at the Exxon and Chevron corporations than gasoline, according to reports released this spring.
Now you can see why Energy Night was so interesting to me. I went for the latest info on the industry, including natural gas and plastics. But I found some things much more intriguing to an Earthwatch columnist. People. And hope.
The kid who will be using his scholarship to become a lawyer and an opera singer will have to go into somebody else’s column.
Details
* FYI: For information on the cash scholarships awarded by the American Petroleum Institute call Dick Miller at 653-4482. No limit on what students choose to study. For new career information about the energy industry call Tim Pompey at the Ventura County superintendent of schools office, 388-4435.
