Demand high for petroleum technology graduates

With the price of oil around $100 per barrel, growing energy demand from emerging economies, growth in the Marcellus Shale region, and a renewed emphasis on safety and environmental impact, the graduates of Panah’s two-year program are in high demand.

Unlike two-year programs that offer courses such as mechanics and welding, Pitt-Bradford’s courses focus on science and engineering, giving graduates a basis for jobs at the junior well-management level.

This fall, two global drilling and completions hiring managers from Chevron’s headquarters in Houston, Texas, traveled to Bradford to interview a dozen students and recent graduates of the petroleum technology program.

Chevron offered seven of those students the chance to apply for jobs as trainees, Panah reported, with a starting salary of $75,000 and an unheard of 400 percent match on a 401K, meaning that for each dollar a student saves for retirement, Chevron contributes four.

After completing six months of training, students will be put to work as junior managers of drilling on a well site, Panah said, helping oversee drilling crew workers.

Those well sites could be just about anywhere, Panah said. Chevron has 700,000 net acres of leased land in Pennsylvania, as well as leases in New York and Ontario for those who want to stay close by, and leases in Poland, Romania, Venezuela and Uganda, Panah said.

Panah said he has definitely seen a steady increase in interest by employers since the petroleum technology program was restarted by Pitt-Bradford in 2006.

Petroleum technology was one of Pitt-Bradford’s first programs, with the first group of students graduating in 1975. In the 1980s, however, the price of oil slid, and the program was discontinued when oil hit $9 per barrel in 1989.

Panah said that the earlier program concentrated on the mechanics of oil and traditional gas drilling, but that the new program, which he designed, focuses on traditional oil and gas reservoir technology and nontraditional gas reservoirs, such as shale gas plays, using state-of-the-art course contents and related technology.

Courses include Environment and Safety, Geology of Marcellus Shale, Hydraulic Fracturing, Geographic Information Systems, Engineering Geology, Petroleum Geology and Geophysics, Mudlogging, Reservoir Structure and Statigraphy, Drilling and Completion, and Gathering and Transportation.

Panah keeps the program hands-on and high tech with industry-grade tools like a newly purchased $15,000 mud logging simulator. Mud logging creates detailed records, or logs, of a borehole.

Interest by employers is also evident in the companies attending the annual Pitt-Bradford career fair in the last few years. Those include Pennsylvania General Energy Co. of Warren, Universal Well Services and American Refining Group.

“Each year, the number of oil and gas companies attending our annual career fair increases significantly,” said Dr. Holly Spittler, director of career services.

Panah added, “There is competition to find good graduates, and our graduates are trained sufficiently to work by themselves after short company site training.”

Panah hopes that increased interest by employers with good jobs to offer will increase interest in the two-year program. Panah noted that while there are jobs for those in the oil field who do not have an associate degree, it is much harder for those workers to advance beyond manual labor and into management ranks.

“If you want to get a promotion,” he said, “you need at least a two-year degree.”

Panah added that with the exception of a couple of students who went on to pursue a four-year degree, most of his students who have graduated since the program was restarted in 2006 have been offered jobs in the energy or engineering fields.

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