Excellent salaries, benefits available not only to experienced oil and gas professionals, but to new engineering/geoscience graduates; ‘Gen-Y’ may hold key to future hiring needs
The modern global upstream industry workforce - whose numbers are growing significantly due to the ongoing boom in deepwater exploration and production of oil and gas - is made up of well-educated, highly competent men and women who have undergone painstaking university and entry-level job training aimed specifically at offshore oil and gas employment. What’s more, these employees, especially the young ones, are culturally diverse and sincerely considerate of their social and environmental responsibilities.
They’re paid well, too, and are bestowed with generous fringe benefits that can help make a life’s career in the upstream oil and gas industry not only attractive, but prestigious, as well.
It’s no secret that rapid hikes in world petroleum demand are taxing the industry’s ability to meet it with sufficient supply, and that surplus inventories are a thing of the past. And it’s hardly surprising that a major result of this imbalance has been an unprecedented increase in exploration and production activity in almost every petroleum province on the planet. That’s particularly true offshore, and even more particularly in deep water. It has created significant career opportunities, not only among oil producers, but also across the ranks of oilfield contractors, service companies, equipment manufacturers and drilling contractors.
Opportunities teem on upstream career paths
Today, even relatively new engineering and geoscience graduates find themselves directly involved in coaxing oil and gas from formations as deep as 25,000 ft underground or undersea. They also may find themselves, physically located both in remote areas thousands of miles from civilization or in exciting international areas with significant cultural interests.
Additionally, companies stress that today’s petroleum professionals are finding and producing hydrocarbons using extremely revolutionary methodologies that often surpass the space program in their degree of innovation and sophistication.
The main classes of professionals who make up the upstream industry are varied. Some of the career professions available from producing companies include geologists, geophysicists, and petroleum engineers, drilling engineers, production engineers, reservoir engineers, facilities engineers, safety engineers, petroleum land men, IT specialists and accountants.
Other jobs include both degreed professionals and highly skilled technicians working as chemical engineers, well-log analysts, environmental/regulatory specialists and petroleum economists. Additionally, all require specialists for departments that most other industries need, including human resources, information technology, legal and administration, to name a few.
Tremendous expansion in the number of new mobile offshore drilling rigs and production facilities under construction for deep and ultra-deep water operations has heightened the demand both for professionals and skilled workers in the contract drilling and service sectors.
Service-providers, of course, are constantly in search of engineers and tool designers, particularly since they have assumed the lion’s share of new technology development across the entire industry.
And finally, because oilfield manufacturing companies now create many new tools specified directly by oil producers for applications in specific wells, they, too, are hiring engineers and tool designers, along with draftspersons skilled in computer-aided design, and skilled computer-aided machine tooling.
The salaries and hourly wages paid in these industry support sectors are competitive with industry in general and in the case of field-level workers, hourly pay often is double that received by laborers and technicians in other industries who are not required to work round-the-clock or be on 24-hour call.
Whatever their ultimate position in whichever sector, oil industry employees are rewarded generously for their work and are exposed to advanced technologies and upward mobility throughout their careers.
Salaries continue to soar among producers
A recent salary study conducted by the Gallup Organization for the Society of Petroleum Engineers indicated that SPE members worldwide reported an average salary increase of 9% from the previous study conducted in 2004.
Worldwide, respondents reported an average income of US$116,834. Respondents reported that they earned an additional $56,975 in bonuses, housing and retirement funds, and 33% reported having a car or car allowance (For more details, see Figure 1). According to the SPE survey, its members’ average annual reported U.S. salary rose from $109,014 to $122,570, representing an average increase of 12% (For more details, see Figure 2).
The average U.S. respondent in to the survey was 45 years old, with 17.5 years of industry work experience. More than a third of them completed education beyond their bachelor’s degree. The average member salary was $122,570. About one in four (24%) had a car or car allowance. Virtually all of those who worked in the U.S. were citizens (89%). U.S. workers who were citizens earned 16% more than those who were not citizens.
In addition to the SPE survey, which included petroleum and related engineering professionals, the American Assn. of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) also recently announced results from its most recent annual member salary survey.
According to AAPG, salaries for petroleum geologists took another jump in 2006-07 with a weighted average increase of 9.1% overall in pay. The 2005-06 year’s salary survey showed an overall 16 percent salary increase.
Conducted annually since 1981 by Mike Ayling of MLA Resources in Tulsa, the most recent showed the 15-19-year experience category charting the largest increase, with an 18% raise in salaries. Entry-level geologists showed a 9.5% increase, with the 3-5 year category geologists’ pay rising 13%. The 20-24 and 25-year-plus experience categories also recorded double-digit increases, with 10.3% and 10.5% hikes, respectively (For more details, see Figure 3).
Companies, including producers, contract drillers, service-providers and manufacturers, are paying far more attention to engineering and geoscience departments at colleges and universities around the world. According to reports prepared by PennWell, scholarship money, summer internships and increased direct funding of both course curricula and teaching aids for those professions all have been increased during the past several years. This, combined with concerted efforts by companies to recast their industry in a favorable light, has increased enrollment in upstream disciplines.
The key to magnetizing ‘Gen-Y’
Petroleum industry companies offer:
- Long-term career development and multiple experiences within a single organization.
- A sense of purpose and meaning in the work.
- Availability and access to mentors and other company champions.
- A “tech-savvy” work environment.
- Open social networks that embrace open and honest communication.
