While millions of college grads look forlornly into the worst U.S. job market in decades, Emily Woner pretty much guaranteed herself one of America’s best-paid post-graduate jobs before she ever set foot on campus.
Spurred by an early interest in following her father’s footsteps into the oil sector, Ms. Woner secured a post-high school internship with Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy Corp.
After summers spent riding seismic trucks in the Barnett shale, designing water pipelines in east Texas and helping model oil reservoirs in Wyoming, she’s now a 22-year-old senior at the University of Tulsa waiting to take a job in one the country’s most sought-after professions: petroleum engineering.
“I’m really lucky. In my class, a lot of us are already committed to companies,” Ms. Woner said.
Luck has little to do with it. Energy companies are racing to exploit America’s vast shale gas and oil fields, the increasing discoveries of which has upended markets and sparked the biggest drilling boom in generations.
While Wall Street slashes the kind of banking and trading positions that were once the most coveted for top graduates, energy firms can’t hire fast enough for the technical jobs that have been all but overlooked for a generation.
The shale boom has run into many obstacles: environmental concerns from earthquakes to water safety, a lack of needed materials and logistical bottlenecks.
But the shortage of specialty engineers may prove one of the most vexing. Poaching is rife and supplies are short, putting a premium on industry veterans who know how to get the most value out of wells that can cost tens of millions of dollars to drill.
Oil companies have seen the squeeze coming for years, and – to a degree – the job market has responded. Bachelor’s degrees in petroleum engineering trebled to over 750 since 2001.
But industry officials and analysts say it is likely still not enough for companies to maintain their ambitious growth in North American shale oil plays, Canada’s oil sands, deepwater offshore Brazil, post-war Iraq and other frontiers.
At least 40 per cent of the globe’s petroleum engineers are expected to retire in the coming decade, according to top industry recruiters. A generation lost to the 1980s oil bust leaves a thin cadre of mid-career professionals to take up the slack until incoming 20-somethings get up to speed.
“We know it will be a challenge to get our share of the talent to meet our growth needs,” said Frank Rudolph, executive vice-president of human resources at Devon.
Half of the world’s energy companies say they will delay projects if they can’t get the right people, according to a 2011 Schlumberger Business Consulting survey of 37 global firms.
And competition is more fierce than ever, said Dane Groeneveld, regional director of NES Global Talent, a worldwide oil and gas industry recruiter.
“It’s at the front end where you’re creating the value and really finding those assets, which really underpin the share price,” he said. “It’s just at the foundation of the future of the business where you tend to find that people are fighting more tooth and nail for people in that space.”
Petroleum engineers seek out oil and gas reservoirs, whether tens of thousands of feet beneath the sea or locked tight in thick shale far underground. They also design methods, equipment and processes to coax as much oil and gas as possible from those unforgiving recesses.
They work with geologists, geophysicists and other specialists to study layers and porosity of rock with seismic data maps and rock samples. Then they decide how to best extract oil and gas, whether by injecting water or steam or blasting cracks in the sides of wells using chemicals and sand to create fissures for oil and gas to flow – a process that has become politically charged amid fears of contaminating groundwater.
Their roles have grown ever more crucial as the industry expands into unforgiving frontiers – ultra-deep water far offshore, or the Arctic – and as they develop ever more high-tech methods, from multi-dimensional real-time reservoir data and electromagnetic surveys to horizontal drilling.
