There has been a lot of conversation and even entire meetings during the past few years devoted to manpower issues in the oil and gas business. Many people are concerned that we will have both a manpower and an expertise shortage in the upstream oil and gas industry in the next 5 to 10 years as many who entered the industry in the 1970s and 1980s reach retirement age. I am not all that concerned, provided we recognize the issues now and take steps to solve any problems caused by these issues.

First, the impending shortage is really a North American problem. If one looks at the demographics in the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), one finds that the average age of the SPE members in North America is about 52 to 53. In the rest of the world, the average age is about 42, with some SPE regions, like Africa, with an average age of its members in the 30s.

Second, I think it is fairly easy to recruit young persons into petroleum engineering if you show them clearly with facts that (1) we are a growing industry, (2) we are a high-technology industry and (3) we are a global industry. When I have done so, I have been successful in convincing both the young people, and sometimes their parents, that getting into the oil and gas industry now provides unlimited opportunity to move up in a high-technology, global and growing business.

Every energy prognosticator says the same thing: "The world is demanding more oil and gas for the coming decades." Figure 1, along with many other useful power point slides, can be found at the SPE Web site under energy education. Figure 1 shows that the oil and gas industry is a growing industry. Since the late 1800s, the global oil and gas business has produced slightly less than 1 trillion stock tank barrels (STB) of oil from conventional sources. Most of the global forecasts predict the ultimate recovery of oil from conventional reservoirs will be between 2.5 trillion and 3 trillion STB. This estimate does not even include heavy oil and liquids from gas conversion.

The oil and gas business is a high-technology business. It is easy to show young persons our plans for deep water, multilateral wells and seismic imaging and convince them of the high-tech nature of our industry.

Other facts to consider are as follows: (1) The workforce is graying and a lot of persons will be retiring in the next 10 to 15 years; (2) new employees have an opportunity to move up fast in their organizations; and (3) our work will include producing more energy to increase standard of living while working to protect the environment.

In the United States we have detailed data on the departments of petroleum engineering. SPE is in the process of collecting data on all departments around the world. There are substantial efforts in petroleum engineering education in virtually every country that produces oil and gas.

In the United States, there are 15 departments of petroleum engineering, with 1,732 undergraduate students, mostly from the United States. Of those undergraduates, 788 are at Texas A&M University, University of Texas at Austin and Texas Tech University. Most of the graduate students studying petroleum engineering in the United States are international students. There are a total of 496 masters students in all the schools, with 264 at Texas A&M, Texas and Stanford. Of the 189 Ph.D. students in all the schools, 112 are at Texas A&M, Texas and Stanford. In general, the United States has been graduating about 250 to 300 students with bachelor of science degrees, 150 to 200 students with a master's degree, and 25 to 50 students with a Ph.D. every year for the past few years. We expect the number of BS degrees to increase in the next few years, while the number of graduate degrees should remain fairly constant.

In summary, it is fairly easy to convince a young person to take petroleum engineering once you explain that it is a growing, high-technology global business with ample opportunity to move up fast due to the graying workforce. Thus, we can fill up the education pipeline by just doing a good job of telling our story to young persons in high school or just entering college.

However, to keep the pipeline full, the industry needs to support the universities by (1) hiring our students for permanent jobs when they graduate, (2) hiring our students for summer jobs to hook them on the industry and help them earn enough money to pay for college, and (3) working with faculty on research by providing them with funding and important problems to work on with our graduate students.

If industry does not do its part, especially the part involving hiring our students as they exit the pipeline, then every thing we are doing now will collapse. Industry executives must commit to supporting petroleum engineering education over the long term.

We have a lot of international MS and Ph.D. students who can work globally. As such, when industry comes looking to hire talent, the international companies should show up and interview our international students. Some companies already do this, but many others miss out on a golden opportunity to find US-trained engineers who are eager to work internationally.

Some companies think they can hire 4.0-grade point average students from any discipline and train them to be petroleum engineers. I guess you can, but it takes a lot of money and many years of training. Meanwhile, our petroleum engineering students are ready to "hit the ground running" - to produce oil. They can earn their pay immediately by solving meaningful problems.

For everybody's benefit, we need to improve the industry image to be sure young persons understand the benefits of the energy industry. Many oil companies have been advertising on television this past year, and I think it is helping. We must also help the SPE and other organizations with public energy education programs.

In conclusion, it is a terrific time to join the high-technology global oil and gas industry. We can recruit, and we can train the students to be petroleum engineers. The key is for industry to make a long-term commitment to support higher education with faculty support and jobs for our students when they graduate.

If all this happens, we can keep the pipeline full.