EPC or Schlumberger?

[opcomm]

For a new Grad, which of these two industries will provide more rewarding options?

EPC - New Grad offer from top 3 firms @ the moment doing process engineering. Good New Grad training but cubicle work - 8- 5. KInd of depressing.

Schlumberger - New Grad will be a Field Engineer going through the 30 - 36 Months structured training program? Field work - not sure how that'll turn out but sounds like adventure.

Please let me know your opinions.

Thanks.

[ExtraSlow]

That's a pretty personal question. Are you the sort of person that craves stability (hours, location etc)? Do you want to travel the world? Do you want to have more authority and autonomy? what are your strengths or weaknesses?

I know for me, the schlumberger job would be better. For some people, the EPC would be preferred.

[SJW]

I did the schlumberger thing. It was certainly an adventure. They are so awesome with their training. I'll never regret that decision.

[Super_Geo]

Schlum. You have better exit opportunities.

[A2VR6]

I went to Schlumberger right after I graduated and stayed there for a little over a year then went to a EPC.

I enjoyed the field work (pretty interesting) and the crew I was working with but management ruined it for me. Moral in my district sucked and out of the 5 field engineers I was working with at the time, only 1 stuck around with the company after I left. The rotations (2 weeks on 1 week off from Q2-Q3 and 3 weeks on and 1 week of Q4-Q1) were ok at first but I soon grew sick of missing birthdays, events, etc. It also depends on what you are doing at Schlumbeger. I can only speak to my experience as an Open Hole Wireline Field Engineer.

That being said, I learned a ton there in a fairly short amount of time. The people that stay there truly love the job and if you stick around the company does reward you as they typically only promote within.

[turbotrip]

schlumberger

[m10-power]

field experience early in career is priceless, 'top' lol ie big epc's are graveyards imo. Much better off working for a smaller epc company and getting broader experience.

[Mitsu3000gt]

My friends who have worked for Schlum have basically told me the pay is pretty bad and they work you into the ground, but it's good experience.

[CompletelyNumb]

What's already been said covers it.

Go to Schlumberger for the experience. The company sucks, the work isn't great, the pay is horrible. But degree+experience is pretty invaluable.

What kind of field engineer position didn't they offer you?

[woodywoodford]

What kind of field engineering are you talking about? Frac?

[Xtrema]

Originally posted by CompletelyNumb
What's already been said covers it.

Go to Schlumberger for the experience. The company sucks, the work isn't great, the pay is horrible. But degree+experience is pretty invaluable.

What kind of field engineer position didn't they offer you?

Yup. Work there but don't get too attached to Schlum. It's a great stepping stone.

[dubhead]

Originally posted by CompletelyNumb
the pay is horrible.

Really I would have assumed significantly more pay being field based comparred to EPC based off the bat.

[lasimmon]

^^ if it is comparable to other similar positions then the pay is great and he doesn't know what he is talking about.

[CompletelyNumb]

^^ Or maybe "great pay" is subjective. Because myself and many others agree its poor. C'est la vie.

:drama:

[Graham_A_M]

Originally posted by A2VR6
I went to Schlumberger right after I graduated and stayed there for a little over a year then went to a EPC.

I enjoyed the field work (pretty interesting) and the crew I was working with but management ruined it for me. Moral in my district sucked and out of the 5 field engineers I was working with at the time, only 1 stuck around with the company after I left. The rotations (2 weeks on 1 week off from Q2-Q3 and 3 weeks on and 1 week of Q4-Q1) were ok at first but I soon grew sick of missing birthdays, events, etc. It also depends on what you are doing at Schlumbeger. I can only speak to my experience as an Open Hole Wireline Field Engineer.

That being said, I learned a ton there in a fairly short amount of time. The people that stay there truly love the job and if you stick around the company does reward you as they typically only promote within.
Lol really? I used to be an open hole operator for Schlum based out of Whitecourt. Which district did you work out of?


Originally posted by Mitsu3000gt
My friends who have worked for Schlum have basically told me the pay is pretty bad and they work you into the ground, but it's good experience.

Its far from a good experience asides from caring about what you`re learning, and thats it. The hours can be brutal. (I remember working a 36 hour non-stop "shift" once, same with being given 1hr notice at 2am to be at the shop in an hour, only to find out when I get there that Id be gone for 10 days straight.)

So for lifestyle, you really have to be single... with no tie downs at all. Its like that for late winter. Come Spring break-up its not so bad.
Money wise, the engineers were sometimes making $10k a month, but more like $3-5k every other month other then the busy season.
I was getting about two thirds of that, sometimes half.
Personally I hated it. I fucking despised every second of it. It was the farthest thing imaginable from any dream job Id ever want to keep. My favorite part about Whitecourt (and many other small oil & gas towns such as Grande Prarie) was watching it get smaller and smaller in my rear view mirror as I drove away for the last time. :nut:

[adamc]

There are many threads on this very forum detailing the sort of pay one should expect when going to work for SLB.

Great pay is entirely subjective, yes, but compared to a lot of it's competitors, Schlumberger is consistently near the bottom of the range, across the board.

Take it from people that have been working in the industry from years.

[A2VR6]

Originally posted by Graham_A_M

Lol really? I used to be an open hole operator for Schlum based out of Whitecourt. Which district did you work out of?


Wainwright. Old ass shop built in the 60s. I was there at the tail end of the heavy oil boom around Lloyd. Now that district (as of last year) along with Whitecourt (a while ago) and Red Deer (2011) has since closed. Everything is out of Nisku now. I was lucky since the operators i had and also the other field engineers were cool as hell and made the job "bearable".


Originally posted by Graham_A_M

Its far from a good experience asides from caring about what you`re learning, and thats it. The hours can be brutal. (I remember working a 36 hour non-stop "shift" once, same with being given 1hr notice at 2am to be at the shop in an hour, only to find out when I get there that Id be gone for 10 days straight.)

So for lifestyle, you really have to be single... with no tie downs at all. Its like that for late winter. Come Spring break-up its not so bad.
Money wise, the engineers were sometimes making $10k a month, but more like $3-5k every other month other then the busy season.
I was getting about two thirds of that, sometimes half.
Personally I hated it. I fucking despised every second of it. It was the farthest thing imaginable from any dream job Id ever want to keep. My favorite part about Whitecourt (and many other small oil & gas towns such as Grande Prarie) was watching it get smaller and smaller in my rear view mirror as I drove away for the last time.


Haha I hear ya on this. The final straw for me was a 40 hour straight fishing job (had to stay up the whole time for this one). A trainee screwed up while logging up after hitting TD and we had to go back down and come up again and surprise surprise we got stuck. Our manager was pressuring us hard after we were done after that to get to a hotel, time out for 8 hours, head back to the shop, flange up and be online again for a job the next day.

I was averaging 6k a month when I was there mainly running single operator (so basically its only you and one other guy carrying a 360 lb tool from the truck to the catwalk), apparently alot of guys were disgruntled since right when I joined they had just cut job bonus'.

If you really want a oilfield services job i'd look into Haliburton. You atleast get 2 or more operators and get paid better for similar type of work.

[Graham_A_M]

Originally posted by A2VR6


Wainwright. Old ass shop built in the 60s. I was there at the tail end of the heavy oil boom around Lloyd. Now that district (as of last year) along with Whitecourt (a while ago) and Red Deer (2011) has since closed. Everything is out of Nisku now. I was lucky since the operators i had and also the other field engineers were cool as hell and made the job "bearable".



Haha I hear ya on this. The final straw for me was a 40 hour straight fishing job (had to stay up the whole time for this one). A trainee screwed up while logging up after hitting TD and we had to go back down and come up again and surprise surprise we got stuck. Our manager was pressuring us hard after we were done after that to get to a hotel, time out for 8 hours, head back to the shop, flange up and be online again for a job the next day.

I was averaging 6k a month when I was there mainly running single operator (so basically its only you and one other guy carrying a 360 lb tool from the truck to the catwalk), apparently alot of guys were disgruntled since right when I joined they had just cut job bonus'.

If you really want a oilfield services job i'd look into Haliburton. You atleast get 2 or more operators and get paid better for similar type of work.
Damn, how new was he? bringing it back up was easy as shit. A chimpanzee can do that without issues, just watch the feed rate and youre golden pretty much.
Yeah, only doing Single O did the guys make the decent coin. Not fun work though. Kind of odd the engineer didn`t notice the trainee`s fuck up. Usually the other operators or the engineer would notice it right on. Mind you, Ive seen some amazingly stupid shit happen, so who knows. I can honestly thank God that I`ve never had to deal with Fishing. I heard many nightmares about it.

CRAZY they`ve since closed Whitecourt and Wainwright. WOW. I never saw that coming. When the slow down of 07 happened, we laid off two thirds of the workplace. Funny that we went from SCREAMIN for people and shutting down trucks due to a lack of people to run them: to laying off 65% of the workplace within three weeks. That taught me everything I ever wanted to know of the oil patch. I dont miss it not for a tenth of a second. It was interesting seeing Motormen & drillers working at Walmart as greeters just to try to make ends meet.
Its funny, you can always tell how well the oil patch is doing by how friendly the towns folk are to each other.

Its interesting being in oilfield manufacturing now. We have some idiotic orders in from the Provost / Macklin area, and Lloyd. Some ridiculously huge orders are coming in. So I assume its just gang-busters out there right about now.
Same with Russia, Australia & Venezuela. we just had a $400 million order come in a few months back. Its just bumpin busy elsewhere.

Halliburton is decent. I wanted a job with them but took SLB`s offering first since I wanted whatever I could take at the time. BJ looked very promising as well.

[Supa Dexta]

Halliburton fukin sucks. Screw them.

[battlebot]

Dont know much about Schlumberger but heres my 2 cents:

EPC companies are like engineering sweat shops(especially the larger ones)

you are sold as a commodity or a product........as soon as there are no projects your out the door

[A2VR6]

Originally posted by Graham_A_M

Damn, how new was he? bringing it back up was easy as shit. A chimpanzee can do that without issues, just watch the feed rate and youre golden pretty much.
Yeah, only doing Single O did the guys make the decent coin. Not fun work though. Kind of odd the engineer didn`t notice the trainee`s fuck up. Usually the other operators or the engineer would notice it right on. Mind you, Ive seen some amazingly stupid shit happen, so who knows. I can honestly thank God that I`ve never had to deal with Fishing. I heard many nightmares about it.

CRAZY they`ve since closed Whitecourt and Wainwright. WOW. I never saw that coming. When the slow down of 07 happened, we laid off two thirds of the workplace. Funny that we went from SCREAMIN for people and shutting down trucks due to a lack of people to run them: to laying off 65% of the workplace within three weeks. That taught me everything I ever wanted to know of the oil patch. I dont miss it not for a tenth of a second. It was interesting seeing Motormen & drillers working at Walmart as greeters just to try to make ends meet.
Its funny, you can always tell how well the oil patch is doing by how friendly the towns folk are to each other.

Its interesting being in oilfield manufacturing now. We have some idiotic orders in from the Provost / Macklin area, and Lloyd. Some ridiculously huge orders are coming in. So I assume its just gang-busters out there right about now.
Same with Russia, Australia & Venezuela. we just had a $400 million order come in a few months back. Its just bumpin busy elsewhere.

Halliburton is decent. I wanted a job with them but took SLB`s offering first since I wanted whatever I could take at the time. BJ looked very promising as well.

It was actually a she... She also was hired the same time as me and went through PEPTEC-1 with me as well. The difference was that I broke out and proved that I was alright to run my own jobs in a month vs. 6 months for her (there was another guy in my district who went to school with me and he broke out in a month so its not unheard of). This was probably her 2nd last job before she got promoted to being unsupervised :nut:.

Basically what happened was that there is a well known software glitch in the logging software which will cause everything to freeze and the software to stop recording data if you dont stop your repeat log manually. You'd think a trainee with 15 some jobs under there belt would be well versed on manually stopping the repeat but she forgot and we had to redo it. First time anyone in the district went fishing in 5 years :banghead:

Lloyd's still busy I think but outfits like Tucker and Weatherford have taken over alot of the jobs there. SLB consistently charges more than the other guys and pays their employees less and I guess it's starting to catch up with them.

Back on topic... I also agree with what others say about EPC's and hence why I only stayed with one for 8 months before I moved to my current job with a owner/operator which i am much more happy with. That being said, I think if you spend a year with a oilfield service company (such as Schumberger) and then start looking for something else with a owner/operator the experience will certainly set you apart from a fresh grad with no field experience.

[ExtraSlow]

Originally posted by A2VR6
SLB consistently charges more than the other guys and pays their employees less and I guess it's starting to catch up with them.
I'm on the side that pays those invoices, and yep, SLB is consistently much more expensive to put out on any job. That's true for open hole, cased hole and cementing.

[themack89]

Originally posted by Supa Dexta
Halliburton fukin sucks. Screw them.

Their shop in Grande Prairie is niiiiiiceee.

They definitely push the boundaries on sleep deprivation though.

[dubhead]

This changes my plans on pushing to work at Slb, it's too bad I've been hitting it off with their recruiters.

[Graham_A_M]

Originally posted by Supa Dexta
Halliburton fukin sucks. Screw them.

ORLY? Ive heard some good things about them, but then again there are a lot of drugs in these oil patch towns, so who knows. :dunno:

[badatusrnames]

Was talking to a Schlumberger cased hole Engineer, apparently the first few years are hell, but once you jump through that fiery hoop and prove yourself, it gets a whole lot better in terms of advancement, working conditions, and a lot of doors also open in terms of working internationally - you've just got to put your time in at first.

I'll keep my cozy office job though...:D

[Graham_A_M]

Advancement depends on the district. At Whitecourt we barely seen any at all. Most engineers were doing the same shit for 5+ years at a time. The only advancement that could be made was if one of the managers left for whatever reason..... which very, very rarely happened.

[A2VR6]

Originally posted by Graham_A_M
Advancement depends on the district. At Whitecourt we barely seen any at all. Most engineers were doing the same shit for 5+ years at a time. The only advancement that could be made was if one of the managers left for whatever reason..... which very, very rarely happened.

This... one of the senior engineers who had been in the district for 3 years was offered a transfer to the gulf coast to go offshore from the Calgary office. At the time he had another job lined up with another company but since they were offering him a chance to go offshore he decided to decline his job offer (for those who dont know, offshore = wayyyy more money and only the best of the best go there as rig time is $$$$ and you dont want to screw up offshore). However, the field service manager basically held onto his transfer letter and refused to sign off on it and let him go to the gulf coast. He hung onto this letter till the day the engineer decided enough was enough and quit.

On the other hand, I think the district and management took some of my comments from my exit interview to heart. 2 of my former trainees from my district were offered a transfer to Norway and Italy respectively after I left and they seem to be enjoying themselves pretty well. However this happened after the district swapped field managers.

Yes there is chance at advancement but it all depends on management. You can luck out and get a cool manager that understands that different experiences and advancement will help the company in the long run or you can get a asshole who'll keep you doing the same thing for 4+ years....

[opcomm]

Thanks everyone for the comments. Gave good insight on the different options for engineers in the oil patch.


I guess I will go with Schlumberger instead of EPC. I really would love an amazing adventure like Schlum offers.

[Graham_A_M]

Originally posted by opcomm
Thanks everyone for the comments. Gave good insight on the different options for engineers in the oil patch.


I guess I will go with Schlumberger instead of EPC. I really would love an amazing adventure like Schlum offers.

I think you`re going to be grossly disappointed in your `adventures` with SLB. There aren't many opportunities and the work can be brutal.

[opcomm]

I'm not sure of what to expect @ Schlum. With big EPCs, I don't know what to expect either.

I'm looking to work @ Schlum or any of the top EPCs, then pursue an MBA @ a top 5 MBA in the states, come back and join management in any of top producers or EPC/Oilfied Service firms, or just change fields maybe to hi-finance if the opportunity exist.

Is there any use for an MBA in the oil and gas industry? Would I have any advantage getting an MBA from top 5 MBA program in the world like Queens, Harvard, Wharton, INSEAD/IMD, etc?

[Supa Dexta]

Ha they'll brag about travelling the world, until you are hired on. They don't want you going to other districts to see how good it can be, and risk losing you. Rumour has it there is oil in places where its warm and not desolate, and you don't need to work 300 days a year to find it - fantasy I reckon! :rofl:

[Graham_A_M]

Originally posted by Supa Dexta
Ha they'll brag about travelling the world, until you are hired on. They don't want you going to other districts to see how good it can be, and risk losing you. Rumour has it there is oil in places where its warm and not desolate, and you don't need to work 300 days a year to find it - fantasy I reckon! :rofl:
Thats pretty much what happened to me exactly. Same with each and every one of my co workers. I think the district head was the only guy that ever traveled outside of Alberta.