Oxy took a boatload of professionals from Big Pharma, NASA, and aerospace during the boom years. One came straight from designing planes to be a “reservoir engineer”. Some were smart enough to continue education and got Masters degrees in O&G. Others took their job if it was the Gov. Will those industries hire PetEng and Geoscientists in return? We don't have transferable skills being this a narrow industry. Who will hire us! Those that cross trained have been out of their fields for so long they will probably phase out. How will hire them? Oxy didn't do them a career favor. They screw up themselves careers too in exchange for big greens. Now Oxy is transferring O&G professionals into accounting or technical field roles because there is not enough money for to afford layoffs... who will hire them?
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A petroleum engineering degree is worthless in this business climate. Even in a normal business climate there is little to no possibility of employment in some other non-oil and gas industry. It is one of the most specialized degrees and the overall perception is that a degreed petroleum engineer cannot do anything but petroleum engineering. Petroleum geologists, and a few petroleum engineers, have in the past gotten themselves trained in environmental science and made the switch to a much lower paying industry. I doubt that sort of thing is possible at this time. I know one geologist who worked his way up to manage a Burger King in a prior downturn. He was glad to have a job .....
Nobody will hire those "shale engineers and geos". They are useless....no experience in real reservoirs, drilling, etc. All manufacturing and decline curve analysis. Thanks to "shale revolution" for the current O&G state...We are here because of incompetence (were wrong for simple rate prediction and econ) and greed (everyone wanted to become a millioner over night)
If your young enough get an MBA in finance or accounting. A lot of technical degree folks have an MBA and it serves them well across industries. Maybe you could get your teaching certificate as well because we will always need good teachers. Hopefully teacher’s salaries will increase in the years to come. I have been in this industry since the early 80’s and have just learned to save my money for these tough times. If you are good at what you do you will find work when things pick up. I got a second degree at night school and it has helped as well. The degree was in a field I could teach in or do business related work with. Thing is I never had to do it because things always worked out to stay in oil. You may never make the money you do in the oil business in another field, but if it provides for you and your family that is worth more than just about anything else. These are weird times and there are 30 million people unemployed. Oil and gas is just small portion of that, so now is not good for many fields. Good luck.
Are you seriously blaming Oxy for the decision that people made to switch to the oil and gas industry? How dumb can you be? They made the decision to change industries. Check the history of O&G. Many layoffs over the years. Choose the green and take the risk. Sometime it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. Duh!
No purpose here @jin. It is the best This old fart can do without glasses, handling an “smart” phone in one hand an a beer on the other. Lamenting our recent times at Oxy
Get rid of the bad middle managers. Just fire them. They are sabotaging the company as it is. No one needs them and they can easily get a job somewhere else with that excellent “manager” title.
I stopped reading after the second grammatical error. Seems purposeful...
waaaaaaaaaaa