Is petroleum engineering a bad major to choose?
People kinda groan when they hear that I’m pursuing a petroleum engineering degree suggesting a more mainstream engineering degree and eventually it’s kinda gotten to me. Should I be concerned or not?
People kinda groan when they hear that I’m pursuing a petroleum engineering degree suggesting a more mainstream engineering degree and eventually it’s kinda gotten to me. Should I be concerned or not?
December 20th, 2009 at 11:49 am
There is a lot of work left to be done and (relatively speaking) there are not that many PE grads every year that are able to do it. Of course the industry is cyclical (I know this since I graduated in 1998 with very low oil prices). I did manage to find a job and it was been a very rewarding career.
Also – you can’t beat the starting salaries coming out of school. This year the average is in the $90,000-100,000 range with about a $25,000 signing bonus. Not too shabby.
December 20th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Yeah its not bad because i don’t think we can ever get completely off of oil but it is kinda a dieing dinosaur i would look into something like bio fuels or a chemical engineer
December 20th, 2009 at 11:49 am
The US Government has been talking about alternative fuels ever since the Oil Crisis of the 1970’s and not much has been done since then. I don’t really know if all this talk about alternative fuels is real now or not. As a Metallurgical Engineer, I understand the pros and cons of being in a specialized engineering field. The last 5 or 6 years in the Steel industry has been pretty good, but I do understand that it can go bad as quickly as it took off.
Specialized engineering degrees generally offer higher salaries than more general engineering disciplines such as ME’s or Civil’s, but your job choices are much narrower. And if your chosen field has a downturn, it can become very difficult to find a job at all when you are done with school. I graduated in 2001, right before 9/11. I had many friends that graduated in the 2 semesters after I did, and there was ZERO job market for them. Alot of them stayed in school to get a Master’s.
I don’t think it is necessarily a bad choice, but beware of the Pro’s and Con’s.
You might want to consider ChemE, and take your engineering electives in PetE or consider a double major in ChemE/PetE. As a MetE, I was only 5 or 6 courses away from a MetE/ChemE double. It might cost another year in school, but your extra job choices and opportunities might make it worth the extra effort.