Why don't you want an oil job?

Posted by jamess - 14 January 2011 at 12:13pm - Comments

The question is: has big oil ever had the brightest minds? (BP boss Hayward in front of world's worst oil spill)

Want to be this man? Apparently not.

Yesterday someone pointed me to an article on the BBC lamenting the drop in young brains chasing jobs in the dirty oil sector. It seems that having lost the battle for our hearts many moons ago, the oil industry has now officially lost the battle for our minds, too.

I had a giggle reading that the oil companies want to rebuild their image to "halt the drift of graduates towards renewables". As if clean, green energy is the new 'red threat'.

Anyway, here's a Friday challenge to speed the hours to the weekend: tell us what turns you off a job with Big Oil.

Tweet on the hashtag #oilturnsmeoff or add a comment below.

Students beware: the oil recruiters are watching.

UPDATE: Thanks to @lucypearceox for highlighting a great report on British Universities and Big Oil by friends at Platform, Corporate Watch and the New Economics Foundation. It's still relevant.

Article tagged as: beyond oil, BP, climate, go beyond oil, jobs, students

Comments Commenting is now closed

Oil is at a PEAK already if you look at the stats truthfully. There is no future in it. Oil is damaging our environment and is linked to our consumerist attitudes that are destroying the planet. Any young person or student with a heart for the future of all concerned, would never go into oil or banking (unless ethical banking). Much better to go into new areas of research looking at how we invent options to oil based products like plastic etc, that we have all become so reliant upon. We need to find renewable sources of these from algea and other safe sources. This is far more interesting and worthwhile, and for the benefit of everyone not just big, fat, greedy shareholders who don't care about anything but their bank balance.

By Leon Moore - 14 January 2011 at 1:02pm

Having an oil-related job makes me support the oil companies. I dont want to feel responsible for their actions. I do not share their views (profit at the tremendous cost of environment) so I would be only against myself if I worked for them.

By Sploitie - 14 January 2011 at 3:13pm

It's illogical and slightly immoral to get a job in the oil industry I feel.

Oil = finite resource. The economy is built upon the infinite exploitation of this, and other, finite resources. That's a really really daft idea.

By Jakehillwalker - 14 January 2011 at 3:58pm

I've been unemployed for 2.5 yrs looking for engineering work. Never once have I considered the oil or nuclear industry. I'd rather starve.

By Brian Lord - 14 January 2011 at 9:02pm

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Curse-Black-Gold-Ed-Kashi/dp/1576875474/ref=sr_1...

This puts me off working in the oil industry.

Geologist.

By Anonymous87 - 15 January 2011 at 12:42pm

@ Brian Lord so you would rather accept benefits? the amount of tax paid by these oil/nuclear workers is probably paying for your dole!

By ERF - 15 January 2011 at 12:43pm

ERF - What a fascist! The guy only said he had been looking for work. Actually, I would be more than happy for my taxes to pay him benefits while he is looking for work, than to contribute to an already detrimental environmental situation. Such is the nature of a civilised society. To try and pick upon an unemployed person to strengthen any argument in defence of oil is really quite sad. Indeed it would seem you are.

By Leon Moore - 15 January 2011 at 1:24pm

1 person agrees

As an underemployed scientist it's my profession to question conventional wisdom. BP are using money to fund fake alternatives like agrofuels and hydrogen cars. They are a threat and that's why I am afraid I could not work for or get support from any oil company. I am taking a stand because I want a car free community. My grandfather was hit by a car at huge cost to the Health Service and the Jewish Historical Society who lost a chair and editor. The drives still has his license.

By Ben Samuel - 15 January 2011 at 4:20pm

One of the major issues that GP has not even registered and will overtake the issue of Oil is that of information. GP (Greenpeace) seem to have little idea about just how dirty the information business really is, yet every one of your who touches a computer, contributes to the mess. Where does all of your data go? do you understand the implications of data centres and where the business is going in today's world? I doubt it, it is easier to yell at the driver of a Range Rover than to understand the cost of the information you keep on storing year on year, it has an hourly cost, that most GP members simply don't understand.

The average Hard Disk Drive consumed around 12-15 watts per hour of energy, older ones consume more and the servers they are connceted to also consume power, plus it all has to be kept cool so you can access information 24/7, BTW, cooling can cost between 40-70% of the power used by the technology you are seeking to keep cool. So what of it? in 2009 we stored 1.5Gb of data every second, at current rates of increase, we will store 500Gb per microsecond by 2020, you do the maths given that Hard Disk Drives as they stand now store upto 2Tb each. How many HDD's will be needed at an average 12watts per hour to store 500Gb per microsecond over just 1 year? where is that power generated, and how?

Solid State will solve the problem you cry, err, no it won't, it is 22 times the cost per gigabyte of storage, who wants to pay that kind of premium? So what is the answer?

The answer is to reduce the power used by HDD's and other components used in server technology and try to halve the consumption, can it be done? absolutely it can, it has been tested and proved to work and we can go further. The Government knows about this, the EU Climate Control and Energy Ministry know about this but no one wants to do anything about it and the IT business won't unless there is a pay off for them.

So what is needed? We need Government to ask the IT Industry as a whole what their plans (apart from more cooling and virtualization) are to reduce input power consumption in ICT hardware solutions and to do it publically by demanding that they come with new ideas to reduce power consumption in Storage Servers especially.

If a European Government has 100,000 servers, even at only 10 HDD's per server that's 1 million HDD's and at 12 watts per drive, 12Mw/Hr of power used to run them, at a cost of around £80/Mw/hr, a nice earner for the power utilities and their shareholders. So given this information, why are governments disinterested in demanding that the IT vendors all submit plans to reduce power consumtion for their new technologies? well, we think that they have not been shamed into doing it and they are inclined to believe the IT vendors when they say it can't be done without cost increases.

Now the science, as the avert goes. The technology is proved, it is cheaper to implement than the current technology so the cost to build drops and the product SAVES MONEY, cuts carbon and is cleaner because we also get rid of the toxic oil in the HDD - what a solution!

Now, are GP members interested to know more, want to help push our politicians into demanding positive change? write to your MP and tell them about this, all of you.

By Michael J - 15 January 2011 at 4:27pm

I live and work in the Canadian tar sands. If you are fortunate enough to have a wealthy family who could support you through five years of university, good for you but, in the real world most young people have to find other alternatives. A young person right out of high school can come up here and start a trade apprenticeship, which can be very hard to find anywhere else, and make over $200K a year.
One day I hope that our need for oil will be less, but realistically we are a long way from the day that we are all driving electric cars. I can’t ever see a day that we will leave fossil fuels behind for good and getting our supply locally makes more sense to me than dealing with the middle East.
So as long as this world relies on oil, why wouldn’t a young person looking to make a very good living want to work in the oil industry?

By Mary Carolyn - 15 January 2011 at 6:57pm

i am 18 and i am currently doing marine engineering cadetship. when i finsh my cadet ship i could easy go work of shore , the only reason i would go do this is because the money you can earn doing relatively simple jobs is quiet high and you can do 2 weeks on 2 weeks of and still get tax days. i would consider offshore wind but 1) the money currently isnt there. 2)a sort of pointless exersice , i beleive wind works but only on a small scale , eg, a turbine on top of your house , not littering our seas , and its all very well but these turbines are going to have to come down in a few years time and way so when you add it all up the amount of power you get out of them to the amount it will cost to take them down then disposse of them there pretty useless and all the steel for them proable came from china (greenist country in the world) and it had to travel all that way by ship.

By alex patrick - 15 January 2011 at 8:19pm

Oil job? No thank you. Yes the money is tempting, but the Earth is more important I do belive. I'm 15, If I can work that out then surely the oil companys can. I just hope they do it fast before another disaster happens.

By Wellyrose - 15 January 2011 at 8:29pm

well i agree with some green issues but in this instance and the current world , you need money and at the end of the day thats what this all boils down to.

By alex patrick - 15 January 2011 at 9:03pm

Anglo-America may have lost the taste, but there are tens of thousands of bright and traditionally trained engineers around the world quite happy to work wherever they can.
Good luck to them.

By Ricardo G - 16 January 2011 at 8:56pm

Nobody wants an oil job simply because of the Gulf oil disaster.

I would only consider taking a job in the oil industry if I could work on improving thier environmental record in some way; moving their opperations towards more sustainable energy sources and supporting programs like "plugged-in-places" in the UK for electric vehicle infrastructure.

However, I was offered a job working for BP when I finish my degree and I flat refused, without knowing what the details of the job were, simply because I know that being an environmental scientist I would be asked to justify thier opperations in terms of the damage it does to the environment and I don't fancy that much.

By Connelly90 - 18 January 2011 at 11:40am

I am a process engineer working in the oil industry. It is good solid well paid and challenging work. I do my best to ensure our designs are as well designed as possible to minimise environmental damage. At present we still need oil to provide all the advantages it presents, whilst working on ways to reduce or replace it by 'green means 'where possible. We should do all we can to be green and support all initiatives that are good for the environment. This is common sense. However: Presently in the UK green sources of electricity provide 4% of demand, the rest is from nuclear and fossil fuel. So: fossil fuels are a necessary evil as we cannot provide enough energy from other sources at the moment. I strongly believe that we should invest heavily in wind turbines, biomass gas, geothermal and all other sources of green energy. But: the UK's green credentials disappear because the Nimbys block all efforts to actually install turbines or implement green changes. The country does does not seem have the wit or will to take up the green alternatives that are available. Some examples: We are a nation of people who will happily spend £10K or more on a new kitchen, but would not dream of spending that on solar panels because the 'payback is too long'. Ecotricity (by far and away our greenest electricity supplier) has 40,000 customers of which I am one. It does not have a bigger market share because people are too mean or short-sighted to sign up. We introduce wheelie bins to recycle more and instead of people rejoicing that something positive is being done we have the papers full of people moaning about the inconvenience of them. Do not knock jobs in the oil industry, instead we, collectively, should get off our arses and actually make some change by doing what we can to be green.

By R Nelson - 18 January 2011 at 2:14pm

However unattractive the idea of continuing to use oil as the main power source is, there is simply no other cost affective method of producing energy in our current climate. Wind isn't the way forward and building nuclear power stations is a positive step but we need the energy now. Currently digging up and burning energy intensive fuels such as oil is the only realistic way of meting rising energy demands. People should stop demonising oil companies and their workers. Without them almost every aspect of the life you currently posses would not be possible.

By Rationality - 20 January 2011 at 8:43pm