Future need for geophysicists and geophysical research in the oil business? Conclusions of a ‘listening tour’

Abstract

The primary product of the University of Houston is its students. The Allied Geophysics Laboratories (AGL) at the University of Houston embarked on a listening tour to find out where the jobs are for new geophysicists, which job skills our students needed, and how to fund our research. AGL was initiated by Fred Hilterman in 1977. In 1981 it had 37 consortia members that supported 40 graduate students. Today, 21 of those former sponsors no longer exist—victims of hard times, mergers, and a contracting oil industry; we are down to nine sponsors. Half of our AGL students are part-timers working full time for Houston's oil and gas industry. National oil companies sponsor a quarter of our full-time students. The consortium model of funding university research is broken. Consortia are looked on as an expense to be justified by deliverables. Our sister consortia are under these same stresses, but in the United States we suffer more than those in the EEC, Canada, and Australia, where there is greater government support for graduate students. Almost every oil company lists technology and people in its top five corporate values. However, many oil companies have abandoned internal technology development or now outsource it. The job title of research geoscientist now hardly exists. Most of our visits on the listening tour were at company sites where we spoke mainly with technology champions or gatekeepers plus a few lead recruiters and top executives. We feel that almost everyone communicated their companies mission, vision, and values (whether or not they agreed with them). Our analysis consists mostly of anecdotal comments. With the following five questions and a blank pad of paper, we visited the companies listed in Table 1. View this table: Table 1. Companies involved on the listening …