You're listening to the Oil and Gas This Week podcast with Mark LeCour and Jake Corley.

This is the show for busy oil pros who quickly want to keep their finger on the pulse of the industry.

What is going on, guys?

Welcome back to another episode of Oil and Gas This Week. You're listening to Episode 191. Mark, what is going on? What's going on is Modal Point and OGGN have a new global headquarters, right? Smack in the Richmond, Texas. Let me translate that, folks. I moved. And so I'm still working out of boxes. But it's all good stuff.

It's nice to be in a new house.

I get to rebuild the studio. Jake and I are work really hard to try to get these episodes out more regular in 2020, which by the way, when you hear this, it will be 2020, although Jake and I record at the very end of the year. So all good stuff. This is our first Friday Q&A. But before we get to First Friday Q&A, Jake, I think I'm going to read a review that we got.

Sounds good.

So this is from Hila Rainwater.

She works for Williams Pipeline. She's a senior project's control analyst and had a good conversation with her. She wrote this back to me. Basically, she says, hey, listen to your recent podcast following up on feedback about diversity and inclusion from prior episode. The reason that I, Mark, just doesn't see it is precisely why there isn't a sufficient sense of urgency around active inclusion and why progress has been painfully slow.

You talk about me are not going to see it because it doesn't impact you.

That's why it's crucial to demonstrate support with real action rather than getting over excited about the progress that's been forced upon the industry and create complacency. I believe you're coming from the right place and I applaud you and you appreciate you for that. You just got to understand that the greater social structure continues to create obstacles for women everywhere, not just in our industry. We just need your guys to make it weird that anyone assume that the woman is the admin. And you know, Jake, this kind of hit me. I get it, right? Because, you know, you and I are both men, and we see a lot in our industry, and we have our opinions and our experiences, but neither one of us are women. And so we really can't put ourselves, or I don't believe we can put ourselves in their shoes. So I was just a big shout to her for reaching out and helping me understand this a little bit better. And I do agree with her, right? We do need to make it weird if there's a woman in our midst that somebody assumes she's the admin. That just needs to disappear forever. Yep, absolutely. 100% agree. All right. Well, let's get to our questions. Jake, what's the first one? First question of the week is from Greg, who's a PE student.

He writes, hi, guys. I find myself coming up to a crossroads and would appreciate some advice. I'm currently at a high-end engineering school on my way to a degree in petroleum engineering. I now have a chance to switch my major and move petroleum engineering focus to something else. I really love the oil and gas

and energy field, but at the same time, I'm a bit freaked out with all the climate or all the

change away from oil. Seeing the Saudi's diversifying way from oil, several car makers

betting exclusively on electric mobility, big oil stocks in a slump, layoffs, et cetera, makes me

wonder if I should make a move now and change to

another engineering major. At the same time, I hear about oil and gas needing good people and expecting demographic shortage of engineers in the near future, not sure what to do, curious what you think, and grateful for a bit of advice. You want me go first? Yeah, go ahead. All right. So first thing is oil and gas, hydrocarmers are not going anywhere. The demand will continue to go up.

So don't worry about that.

The thing about becoming a petroleum engineer, though, is you tend to be focused only on upstream. And that's a cyclic part of the industry. My suggestion to you, and this is what Jake and I have told a lot of people in your situation is oil and gas need you. In fact, get out of school the next couple of years with a degree of petroleum engineer and you can be one of the few petroleum engineers out there. So think big dollars to start off, but you need to mix that with something to buffer the ups and downs. And my thing, of course, would be like a big data analytics program. So if you get some big data analytics under your belt and come out of school with your degree of petroleum, you're going to be in a really good place. Now, once you start your career, you need to do a very good job of networking and don't get stuck just in your bubble. You know, if you get hired by one of the super majors and you're on their upstream portfolio, reach out to your peers and other parts of the super major, go to different parts of the industry. It's up to you to future proof your career.

But you're fine as to get out school as a petroleum engineer, I think. Yeah, I agree. We obviously love oil and gas, and I want to tell everybody to come in. But it is definitely we're in a transformative time. The industry is transforming into something that we've never seen before. So we're kind of going into the territory. So it's really kind of hard to say, you know, where things are really going to go?

I think if you get a petroleum engineering degree as long as you're good and you kind of makes it with something like Mark said, like data science, I think you'll, I think you'll have the tool set to do well in the space. In the event that you wanted to move into other kind of engineering, my suggestion would be, or at least what I would do, would be some kind of mechanical engineering because I've seen a lot of mechanical engineers do petroleum engineering. I've seen a lot of mechanical engineers do software engineering. It's kind of a very generic engineering degree that allows you to do a lot of different things. Just my two cents. All right. Next question. Next question is from Tiffany, who's a communications officer. Wait, let me stop you real quick. I think it's really funny because Jake and I keep getting Giana and Ghana messed up.

So she actually was nice enough to put in parentheses South America.

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