‘Slap in the face’: Pandemic disrupts nascent oil careers
HOUSTON — Sabrina Burns, a senior at the University of Texas at Austin, had thought she would be launching a lucrative career in the oil and gas industry when she graduated in a few months.
But the collapse in the demand for oil and gas during the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted her well-laid plans.
“We got a slap in the face, an entirely unforeseen situation that rocked our entire mindset,” said Burns, who is studying petroleum engineering. “I have applied for every oil and gas position I’ve seen ... and nothing really has turned up. I’m discouraged.”
With fewer people commuting and traveling, the oil and gas industry has taken a punishing blow. Oil companies have laid off more than 100,000 workers. Many businesses have closed refineries, and some have sought bankruptcy protection.
The industry has attracted thousands of young people in recent years with the promise of secure careers as shale drilling took off and made the United States the world’s largest producer of oil. 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 pandemic ends, 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 2 million people. Even after recent layoffs, petroleum companies still employ more people than the fast-growing wind and solar businesses, which have a combined workforce of at least 370,000, according to trade groups.
Burns, 22, said her choices have narrowed considerably over the past nine months. With opportunities in oil and gas limited, she recently accepted an internship with an engineering consulting firm specializing in energy conservation, and she may eventually apply to graduate school in environmental science.
Tosa Nehikhuere, the son of Nigerian immigrants, has been relatively lucky. Shortly after he graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018, he joined a big European oil company, working various internships and jobs in the field and on the trading floor.
But it has been such an unsteady ride that he already has misgivings about the direction he took in college.
In the middle of Nehikhuere’s freshman year, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, led by Saudi Arabia, flooded the world market with oil to try to undercut the booming U.S. shale oil drilling industry, sending prices tumbling.
“It was pretty n e r v e -wracki n g ,” h e recalled. “I saw seniors with three internships at the same company get frozen out; juniors, sophomores having trouble getting internships.”
Nehikhuere thought about switching majors, but he figured that oil prices would recover, as they had so many times, and they did through most of 2018 and 2019.
But the coronavirus pandemic took hold just as Nehikhuere’s career was gaining traction, and now he is worried again.
Nehikhuere, 24, did not want to identify his employer, but he said it is laying off workers and is debating how aggressively it should pivot away from oil and gas toward renewable energy.
If the company does move rapidly toward cleaner energy, he said, he is not sure if there will be a place in it for him. “How much are my skills going to transfer?”