re: Texas A&M: A warning to petroleum engineering students

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Since this won't happen in our lifetime we should be prepared.

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How are you so certain about that?

Oil is already down to $80 a barrel. Can the industry keep booming at this price? Yes. Will the price stay high? No one knows. The recent boom we've had (~the past 10 years, minus the hiccup during the recession) is very similar to the 70's-early 80's. Everyone was hiring then, oil price was through the roof, enrollment numbers were tripling in university O&G programs. That lasted about 10 years then the bottom fell out, people lost jobs, companies stopped hiring, no one was going to school to be a geologist or PETE anymore. In fact, the petroleum engineering department at LSU had maybe 10 students per graduating class in the 90's.



Not saying it will or will not happen again, but it's entirely possible. The oil companies (well, the ones that survived, anyway) lived through it in the 80's, and they know it could easily happen again. I hope it doesn't but it's a cyclical industry.