DENVER - A resurgent interest in oil and gas careers may help avert a looming labor crisis in the energy industry.
Students are flocking back to petroleum education programs, enticed by plentiful job prospects, handsome salaries and cash bonuses.
Colorado School of Mines and the nation's other top engineering schools this year enrolled the largest number of undergraduate petroleum engineering students since 1987.
Ben Turner graduated last spring from the School of Mines with a degree in chemical engineering and an emphasis in petroleum refinement.
His timing couldn't have been better, as oil prices were rising dramatically.
Many of the recruiters on campus during job fairs last spring came from the energy industry.
"That was the big hiring force," said Turner. "Those were the only companies I interviewed with." Turner, 22, landed a job as a lab manager at Englewood-based oil recovery company TIORCO Inc. He said many of his friends have had similar success, some netting substantial signing bonuses.
The boom is coming after warnings that the graying of the oil and gas industry could lead to a serious shortage of skilled professionals.
"This is an industry concern," said Dave Hager, Kerr-McGee's senior vice president for oil and gas exploration and production.
"The average age for critical skilled workers in the industry is about 50 years old with a shortage of young engineers, geologists and geophysicists in the labor pool," said Hager, whose company is one of Colorado's largest natural-gas producers.
Years of energy-worker attrition from retirement, corporate consolidations and layoffs has left the industry with a deficit of professional employees.
But with high prices for oil and gas, companies are looking to shore up staffing to handle increased exploration and production.
"It's very common for our petroleum engineering students to get multiple job offers," said Craig Van Kirk, chairman of the Colorado School of Mines petroleum engineering department.
"There's nothing else you can get a bachelor's degree in and get such a high salary so quickly," he said. "We love it because we're in high demand and we're making a lot of money."
Freshly graduated petroleum engineer majors from the Golden school last year received average salaries of $63,000. This year's grads will earn about $67,000, Van Kirk estimated.
Plus, employers are offering signing bonuses of $10,000 to $30,000, he said.
Graduate degrees command higher salaries. Van Kirk said master's degrees generate starting salaries of $80,000 to $85,000. One Mines student who graduated this month with a Ph.D. in petroleum engineering got a job offer of $111,000, he said.
Lucrative salaries and high levels of college enrollment tend to mirror increases in oil and gas prices.
At the nation's 10 largest petroleum-sciences schools, undergraduate enrollment surged in the early 1980s when crude oil was trading at a then-record level of $37 a barrel.
Undergraduate petroleum-engineering enrollment at the schools peaked at 6,928 in 1983, then fell dramatically in subsequent years as oil prices dropped. Enrollment declined to a modern-day record low of 881 in 1990.
"People headed for what they believed to be greener pastures," said Charles Swanson, an oil and gas analyst with Ernst & Young.
"The talent didn't return when the market recovered (because of) the explosion of information technology and the boom in high-tech, high-paying jobs," he said. "People had more options than before."
But with oil and gas prices rising sharply over the past three years, energy companies are scrambling to attract new professional workers.
"The labor situation is getting worse and worse," Van Kirk said. "That's making our job prospects better and better."
- Will Shanley contributed to this report
