Tuesday, April 15, 1997

Geologists riding new oil industry surge

By GREGG JONES

The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS - Andrea Adams was 11 years old when oil prices crashed in 1986.

By the time she graduated from high school in Buffalo, N.Y., seven years later, the U.S. oil industry was in the process of slashing half a million jobs. Job security was an oxymoron for petroleum geologists, and college professors were discouraging earth science students from even considering a career in the oil business.

Yet there was Adams on Tuesday, a 22-year-old Texas A&M petroleum geology graduate student, in full networking mode at the American Association of Petroleum Geologists annual meeting at the Dallas Convention Center.

She brimmed with enthusiasm about the prospects of an oil industry career and shrugged off the horror stories that most of those attending the meeting could serve up with the slightest prompting.

A few weeks from now, Adams will begin a summer internship in Montana with Conoco Inc., the Houston-based oil company. And, if the experience of this year's crop of petroleum geology graduates is any indication, she'll have her pick of oil industry jobs next spring when she collects her master's degree.

"I really wasn't looking to go into oil," Adams said. "But oil companies are hiring again. It would be a good opportunity to get into the business right now because they're going to need to replace people who are retiring."

Indeed, in one of the surest signs of the strength of the oil industry recovery, companies are engaged in a bidding war for the services of young petroleum geologists.

One recent graduate was promised a $50,000 cash bonus if he would stay with the company that hired him for three years, according to the latest salary survey commissioned by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

A number of Texas A&M geology graduates collected bonuses this year for accepting oil company offers, according to Adams and Jeni Voncannon, a classmate who was also at the exhibit hall on Tuesday.

"I wish I were 30 years younger," said 70-year-old Bob Cowdery, a retired petroleum geologist from Wichita, Kan. "I'm really encouraged by what's happening in the industry. I wish I could be a participant rather than an observer."

Cowdery, the current association president, said he recently called eight major oil companies. Every one is looking to hire geologists. At least one is looking for more than 100 recruits.

The current job market for petroleum geologists is "as brisk as I have seen it since 1984," said Mike Ayling, president of MLA Resources, the firm that conducts the association's survey. And demand could rise further still because of what industry officials refer to as the "graying" of the ranks of petroleum geologists.

"There are not a lot of young geologists because a lot of graduates avoided the oil industry for several years because it was in the doldrums," said Larry Nation, an association spokesman. "What we have preached about for years is happening: The demand for earth scientists is greater than supply."

Part of the problem is that geology graduates in the 1980s started opting for more secure careers in environmental remediation work. That's starting to change, though. In 1995, 55 percent of geology graduates went into environmental work and 11 percent into the petroleum industry, with the others pursuing teaching careers or other fields, Cowdery said. Last year, about 15 percent of graduates opted for oil industry work.

"I'm telling these kids that I'd get into oil and forget about environmental," said Cowdery. "It's starting to turn around."

Recent geology graduates aren't the only beneficiaries of the oil industry's improved fortunes resulting from higher oil and natural gas prices. Some industry veterans have seen their paychecks increase by as much as 10 percent, the latest AAPG survey found.

As a result, morale is high among the 7,000 geologists attending the Dallas convention, which ended Wednesday.

"People are extremely upbeat," said Nation, who is attending his 14th petroleum geologists' convention. "People are making deals. They're being hired and selling technology."

The convention has attracted casualties of the bust who are considering getting back into the oil business.

Tom Hansen, 52, lost three oil industry jobs during the 1980s. "I finally said enough is enough," he said. In 1989, he enrolled in an Oklahoma State University program to retrain oil industry geologists to go into environmental work. He became a specialist in groundwater contamination remediation and opened a consulting firm in Wichita.

"I like what I do, but the excitement's not there," he said. "In the oil business, you always had the chance of hitting it big."

He decided to come to Dallas to see old friends from the oil business, drum up some environmental business, and, he confesses, to size up for himself all this talk about the new opportunities for petroleum geologists. "I talked to my former boss in Midland recently, and he said there aren't any unemployed geologists," he said.

So would he get back in the business?

"Probably not," he said at first. "What would you do if you'd gotten laid off from the same industry three times? Wouldn't you be a little skeptical getting back into it?" But, he added a little later, "I'm not saying I wouldn't. If the right opportunity came along I would consider it."

For geologists who survived the downturn, the notion that the industry has finally emerged from the nerve-wracking years of massive job cuts takes some getting used to.

"I've only known bad times," said Mark Hempton, 42, a Shell Oil Co. geologist in Houston who went into the business in the mid-1980s, on the eve of the bust. "I think everyone feels more secure these days. But I keep an eye on the price of oil, and I get nervous when it drops below $20 a barrel," as it has in recent days.

Without question, he said, optimism in the industry is the highest it has been in a decade. But, he hastened to add, "I'm not going to forget the low points. It's a cautious optimism."

Whether it's the exuberance of youth or the fact that they didn't experience the oil bust firsthand, Adams and her Aggie classmate, Voncannon, said they are confident they won't wind up as casualties in the next oil industry collapse.

Voncannon, who will intern at Burlington Resources in Houston this summer, said she is "definitely going into the oil industry" when she earns her graduate degree next spring.

"I don't know anyone who applied for full-time (petroleum geology) jobs from A&M this year that didn't get one," she said. "Most of them got more than one offer."