AIPG-TX

Workforce in Texas

• 59,000: geoscience employees (non-federal/self-employed) in 2015¹
• $103,500: average median geoscience employee salary¹
• 270,000: jobs in extractive industries in 2015²
• 80: academic geoscience departments³

Water in Texas

In December, 2016, the Texas Section of AIPG began an online survey of Texas membership about career opportunities and choices. We asked Texas members to tell us what subjects they needed most to improve/broaden their careers. We indicated that we would then search for online resources addressing the top three areas of interest. For more on the survey, click here.

The results of the survey indicated the top three interest areas were:

• Petroleum Geology – Principally concerned with the evaluation of seven key elements applicable in the search for hydrocarbons: source, reservoir, seal, trap, maturation and migration.
• Hydrogeology / Groundwater Resource Evaluation – Groundwater quality and availability issues. Before water resources can be developed and managed, they must be evaluated, i.e., what portion of those resources can be sustainably developed for various uses, after setting aside a proportion for environmental or ecological needs.
• Unconventional Hydrocarbon Resources – Distribution and production of oil and gas from shale (fracking) and gas from coal bed methane. Unconventional hydrocarbon deposits are very diverse and difficult to characterize overall, but in general are often lower in resource concentration, dispersed over large areas, and require well stimulation or additional extraction or conversion technology.

We generated a list of online courses (with links), webinars and resources, all of which address the above three career paths.