The Oil And Gas Industry - 1070 Words

Starting my petroleum engineering degree, the oil and gas industry was doing very well at the time.The price of oil was around a hundred dollars per barrel, new independent companies were frequently being created, and the employment rate after graduating with a petroleum engineering degree was close to one hundred percent.However, the outlook of the industry has drastically changed while being in school.The price of oil is now hovering around thirty dollars per barrel and many companies are now having to declare bankruptcy because the cost of new drilling is not economically feasible.This applies to production companies, service companies, and drilling companies.These days, more petroleum engineers are being layed off rather than being†¦show more content†¦Before starting my petroleum engineering degree, I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005 with a degree in Economics.My first job out of college was a petroleum landman leasing mineral rights in the Barne tt Shale in my hometown of Fort Worth, Texas.I could not have found a better job to start out with from school and I really developed a strong interest in the oil and gas industry.I soon moved on to researching title work to determine mineral owners in places like Wyoming, New Mexico, and all over west Texas.One of the reasons I enjoyed the industry so much is that it was such an exciting time to be involved and it was a very competitive market place.Every courthouse I worked in was usually packed, with other petroleum landmen trying to determine mineral owners as fast as they could and sign new leases to start new drilling projects.After working as a landmen for a few years, I decided to go back to school and learn more about the production and drilling aspects of the industry.I began attending LSU to study petroleum engineering.Having an economics degree, I always paid a lot of attention to the stock market and the price of oil.I always knew that it was a real possibility oil pric es could come crashing down because of the booming supply of oil that outpaced the global demand growth.That