HOUSTON – Sabrina Burns, a senior student at the University of Texas at Austin, thought she would be starting a lucrative career in the oil and gas industry when she graduated in a few months.
But the collapse in demand for oil and gas during the coronavirus pandemic has interrupted its well-planned plans and is forcing it to consider a new path.
“We received a slap in the face, a totally unforeseen situation that shook our whole mindset,” said Burns, who is studying oil engineering. “I applied for all the oil and gas jobs I saw, like all my colleagues, and nothing really came up. I am discouraged. “
With fewer people traveling and commuting daily, the oil and gas industry suffered a severe blow. Oil companies have laid off more than 100,000 workers. Many companies have closed refineries and some have sought bankruptcy protection.
The sector has attracted thousands of young people in recent years with the promise of safe careers as shale exploration took off and made the United States the world’s largest oil producer. But many students and recent graduates say they are no longer sure that there is a place for them in the industry. Even after the end of the pandemic, some of them fear that growing concerns about climate change will lead to the inevitable decline of oil and gas.
These students are seeking elite positions in an oil and gas industry that employs about two million people. Even after recent layoffs, oil companies still employ more people than the fast-growing wind and solar companies, which have a combined workforce of at least 370,000, according to trade groups.
Burns, 22, said his choices have narrowed considerably in the past nine months. With limited opportunities in oil and gas, she recently accepted an internship at an engineering consulting firm specializing in energy conservation and may eventually enroll in an environmental science college. She is also considering moving in with her sister after graduation to save money.
“I feel that companies are going to be very cautious about getting out of this, about making new hires,” she said.
Ms. Burns was drawn to an oil and gas career by stories that her father, a helicopter pilot, told her about the successful engineers she met working on offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. But while her professors talk about the future of oil and gas companies, she is concerned.
Even before the pandemic, Burns said, she had some doubts about the industry she chose. Other students and even an Uber driver taking her and others to an oil industry banquet in 2018 raised questions about the future of oil and gas and why renewable energy might be a better bet.
“Have you heard of solar panel?” she remembers the Uber driver asking her and her friends.
“The silent trial and the passing of comments weighed heavily on me,” she added. Her parents persuaded her to follow her program, and Ms. Burns said she was committed to the industry and working to improve its environmental performance.
“I hope I can eventually put all my skills and knowledge to work,” she said.
‘Demand will come back.’
Stephen Zagurski, a graduate student in geology at Rice University, said the timing of his graduation in the coming weeks “is not perfect, far from it.”
“You have no vacancies available and you have a large pool of talent and an abundance of graduates who leave school,” he added. “It will make opportunities to enter the industry much more difficult.”
But Zagurski, 23, said the oil and gas industry will recover just as it did many times in the past century, despite the popular notion that the pandemic would permanently reduce energy consumption habits. “The demand will come back,” he said. “Let’s be honest here, how many things in our daily lives contain some kind of oil-based product.”
Mr. Zagurski did an internship at Roxanna Oil, a small company with managers who are his second cousins, and has been given increasing responsibilities.
He is likely to be able to join Roxanna full time after graduation and is confident that the market for young geoscientists and engineers will recover. If the oil industry does not recover, he is also considering working with geothermal energy or environmental sciences or pursuing a doctorate. “Everyone is waiting to see what will happen,” he said.
Some have changed sectors.
Myles Hampton Arvie, a senior student at the University of Houston who studies finance and accounting, wanted to follow his father in the oil and gas industry.
“Energy and gas is something that I love,” he said. “Oil and gas are not going anywhere for the next 20 or 30 years, so while we are making this transition to cleaner energy, why not be a part of it?”
Her father was a project manager in offshore fields in the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. Arvie is interested in an office job and has been an intern twice at EY, also known as Ernst & Young, doing financial modeling, auditing and fine-tuning balance sheets for several American and Canadian oil companies. He became the vice president of the Energy Coalition, a group of students that offers educational and job fair opportunities to students.
Mr. Arvie attracted enough attention for interviews with several oil and gas companies, but a job offer proved to be illusory. “It’s very competitive,” he said, and the recession just made it harder to get a position.
Prepared to graduate in May, Mr. Arvie, 22, changed careers and accepted a job at JPMorgan Chase, where he hopes to become involved in derivatives and marketing in the technology industry. Someday, however, he said, he may find a place in the energy industry.
“I’m a little disappointed,” he said. “But you have to keep it moving.”
– Only at the wrong time.
Clayton Brown, a graduate student at the University of Houston who is studying oil geology, remembers finding an article online four years ago that stated that the future couldn’t look brighter for geologists investigating underground oil reserves and gas.
“I saw the salary that oil geologists earn and I was immediately interested,” said Brown.
From Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, NC, Mr. Brown went on to study geology at Western Colorado University. He was fascinated by the science behind seismic testing and rock and sand formations.
Confident in his career choice, he asked for tens of thousands of dollars to continue his studies.
Now 23, Brown has a student debt of $ 55,000. When he graduates next fall, he will owe about $ 70,000. To make matters worse, the small oil company where he was interning recently stopped paying him as he cut costs to manage the crisis.
He returned to North Carolina to live with his parents while taking classes online and sending out resumes. “Covid was quite difficult,” he said. “Nobody expects a virus to destroy the oil industry.”
Still, he said, he has no regrets and calls the retraction “just a bad time”.
A job for now, but concerned with the future.
Tosa Nehikhuere, son of Nigerian immigrants, was relatively lucky. Shortly after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018, he joined a major European oil company, working in various stages and jobs in the field and on the floor.
But it has been such an unstable journey that he already has doubts about the direction he took in college.
Mr. Nehikhuere’s parents were poor in Nigeria. They moved to New York, where Mr. Nehikhuere’s father drove a taxi. They ended up going to Houston, where life was cheaper and their parents followed a career in nursing.
They embraced the oil business, which dominates Texas and his home country, and urged his son to seek oil engineering. It is a common path for immigrants and first and second generation Americans in Texas.
In the middle of Nehikhuere’s first year, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, led by Saudi Arabia, flooded the world market with oil to try to undermine the thriving American shale drilling industry, causing prices to plummet.
“It was very desperate,” he recalled. “I saw elderly people with three stages in the same company being frozen; juniors, sophomores having trouble getting internships. In general, it was very bad in terms of job prospects. “
Mr. Nehikhuere thought about changing majors, but he realized that oil prices would recover, as they have so often, and during most of 2018 and 2019.
But the coronavirus pandemic spread at a time when Nehikhuere’s career was gaining momentum, and now he is worried again.
Nehikhuere, 24, declined to identify his employer, but said he is laying off workers and debating how aggressively he should move away from oil and gas for renewable energy.
If the company moves quickly towards cleaner energy, he said, he is not sure if there will be a place for him. “How much will my skills transfer?”
“There will be a significant amount of layoffs, changes and outsourcing,” he added. “To be honest, I don’t know if it will affect me or not. It’s really in the air. “
Nehikhuere is already thinking about moving, perhaps looking for work in a consulting firm or a company that provides technology to oil and gas companies.
“As I think more and more about my career, the volatility involved in working for an oil and gas company can be very worrying,” he said. “I prefer something more stable.”