Oil Firms Boost Campus Exploration
University of Texas senior Thuan Phan switched majors from computer science to geological sciences, figuring the field trips would make it more fun. Now his degree turns out to be lucrative too.
Big Oil has been doing some big recruiting on U.S. campuses this year -- as have many smaller companies in the petroleum and natural gas business. The combination of high prices, an aging workforce and a tight pipeline of trained workers has the industry desperate for talent. Phan accepted a $55,000-a-year offer in Houston at Schlumberger Ltd., an oil field services firm.
“The pay’s really good, and it’s just exciting,” said Phan, who might pursue a master’s degree while he works.
For job hunters, 2006 is a good time to graduate from college. The National Assn. of Colleges and Employers’ most recent survey found that companies were planning 14.5% more on-campus hiring this year; a recent salary survey showed offers up significantly across a number of fields.
But it’s a particularly good time for petroleum engineers and geologists -- fields that were so slow in recent years that some university departments closed. Offers made last fall to undergraduate petroleum engineers averaged $62,236, up more than 6% from the previous year and the highest of any categories in the college and employer group’s survey (geologists’ starting salaries are generally somewhat lower).
Prominent geoscience programs, including those at University of Texas, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Colorado School of Mines, report that more companies are interviewing on campus. William Fisher, dean of Texas’ Jackson School of Geosciences, saw something this year he’d never seen before: A student received a signing bonus -- for a summer internship.
“My guess is the demand for geoscientists is roughly twice the supply,” Fisher said.
Maria Zuber, department chairwoman of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at MIT, said high-level people from oil companies frequently come to her office saying, “Send me more students.”
“We can’t keep up with the demand of what the oil companies need,” Zuber said.
Three major factors are at work:
* Prices. Oil at about $70 a barrel provides incentive and funding to look for more of it. But most of the easy-to-reach oil has already been tapped, and finding what’s left requires advanced technology and expertise.
“If you go back to the old ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ show, you dig a hole in the ground and oil pops up. Those days are gone,” said Paul Poley, vice president of human resources at Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy Corp.
If Devon is going to spend $60 million for a rig to drill through the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, it wants to hear from smart people that an oil strike is likely. Devon hires mostly from its intern class, which will be about 170 this summer, 17 times larger than three years ago. “We recruit as many as we can possibly handle,” Poley said.
* Demographics. During the oil bust of the 1980s, the industry stopped hiring. Now, workers’ average age is 49. Big companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell predict that half their workforces 10 years from now has yet to be recruited, said Christopher Keane, director of communications and technology at the American Geological Institute.
* Too few students. Interest in the geosciences varies with the market, but it takes time to adjust. Total U.S. geoscience degrees approached 10,000 annually in the early 1980s, then crashed to about one-third that by 1991. Last year, about 2,400 undergraduate and 1,500 graduate degrees were granted.
At University of Texas, undergraduate enrollment was once as low as 110 students but now it’s growing modestly, with about 200 in the department. Still, demand is growing faster. Good students, Fisher said, have as many job offers as interviews.
There is solid interest from big companies such as BP (hiring 235 full-timers from American campuses this year, up from 163 last year), but also mid-size ones such as Devon and Anadarko Petroleum Corp in the Woodlands, Texas. Some students are going to even smaller specialty exploration firms that may pay more while offering less long-term job security.
In geoscience, a master’s degree is still the entry ticket for many jobs. But experts say companies are becoming more flexible about hiring and training undergraduates. They will have to. Keane said the industry would need as many as 30,000 more experts over the next decade, but at current rates, U.S. universities will produce only half that many graduate degrees.
Oil companies aren’t the only place to go with a geoscience degree. Kim Nguyen, a senior hydrology major at Texas, said she didn’t pursue oil company jobs for ethical reasons but found work with an environmental consulting firm. Matt McDonald, a master’s candidate in geophysics, said he “was kind of blown away by all the offers” from the oil industry. Still, for now at least, he turned down Shell in order to pursue a doctorate, which would leave open an academic career.
Nguyen said two older sisters who studied business and engineering questioned her choice of field a few years ago. But the engineer later discovered that many of the companies she was targeting were looking for geologists.
“It’s kind of cool to be in demand,” Nguyen said, “when everyone had doubts.”
