Drink Up
How many of you have ever heard of Devon Energy? Devon is a relatively modest ‘independent’ oil producer based in Oklahoma City, with operations in the Gulf of Mexico, the Plains states, and the Southwest. Why Devon?
In today’s Wall Street Journal , Devon is mentioned in passing in an interesting piece in the Marketplace section. (A Gusher for Oil Grads). The piece reports that as the price of crude oil hovers around $100/barrel, salaries for entry level jobs for recent grads in petroleum engineering and geology are also skyrocketing. To the tune of $80,000-110,000 for starting salaries! Not bad at all for a 21 year old who does not work on Wall Street.
Back to Devon. For a firm that is little known throughout most of the country, it is HUGE: It reports over $11B in annual revenue, while Google, who we’ve all heard of, reports about $16B/year in revenue. The point, simply, is that Devon is a big-ass company with huge turnover, yet it is one of those ‘independent’ oil companies that flies below the radar.
Last Call
Yet they are paying huge salaries at last call. Last call? A 2004 report, issued by BP (formerly British Petroleum now Beyond Petroleum), suggests that there are only about 40 years left of usable oil reserves in the world. Now, subtract the 4 years since the report was published, and there you have it: 36 years. The entire industry of engineers and geologists being trained-up to extract fossil fuels from the earth have… 36 years left to bag their little fortunes and head off to the golf course.
Unfortunately this suspends an enormous amount of potential research energy that could go into sustainables and renewables, but at Big Oil Tavern, that stuff is for wimps and commies.
Last Call… So Chug!!!
The Butcher
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