I hold nothing but sympathy for law students.
It may not coincide with popular opinion, but being within such a close proximity to the D.C. beltway, I’ve met more than my share of them over the years. Practically all of them are miserable.
Take your average law student, put him through a rigorous amount of coursework for the better part of a decade, saddle him with six-digit loan debt, THEN, after all that, tell him the chances of finding employment are slim to none.
Gaining employment in D.C. is a grueling process, and a few partners have confessed they’ve had so many applicants that it’s common to see these students offering to work an entry-level job for free just to get some experience on their résumés.
Then again, the future bodes even worse for the rampant number of new freshmen enrolling today. The Bureau of Labor Statistics only projects the work for legal work will grow by 10% between now and 2022 (slightly less than the average for all occupations).
On the flip side, there’s one profession I envy above all others: petroleum engineers.
Unlike their lawyer counterparts, these students are at the top of the food chain.
Not only do they have to spend half the amount of time in the classroom as lawyers do, but they’re also handsomely rewarded immediately after receiving that tiny piece of parchment.
With a salary of more than $87,000 per year, a petroleum engineer is the highest-paying entry-level job in the market today.
In fact, I met my first petroleum engineering student in the George Bush Intercontinental Airport this morning. Trust me, they know how good they have it. He even had an overly confident air about him when he described his future job prospects.
But he could afford to be cocky, with statistics from the Labor Department backing up his assertiveness. His chosen profession is growing at more than double the average rate…
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
That’s also not to mention he was learning one of the highest paying non-medical professions in the U.S. economy.
Meeting him wasn’t too surprising. While D.C. may be flooded with would-be lawyers, I was flying out of the perfect breeding ground for petroleum engineering.
It’s Not Too Late
Last Friday, I mentioned the boom underway in one powerhouse Texas oil play. Yet just a dusty, three-hour drive from the airport terminal in which I was sitting lies the rapidly beating heart of Texas oil production — Karnes County.
When the last numbers were crunched at the Texas Railroad Commission, it reported that more than four and a half million barrels of crude oil were pumped out of Karnes County in September — well over a million barrels more than the next-highest oil-producing county in the Lone Star State.
Take a second look at this who’s-who list of Texas County oil production. Notice anything peculiar? Maybe that all of these counties are located in either South or West Texas.
Your strategy here is simple.
Eagle Ford Stocks for Pure Profit
One thing has become abundantly clear to us regarding Texas tea…
There’s going to be a fortune flowing into South Texas this year. Companies will spend up to $30 billion developing the Eagle Ford Shale in 2014, and I expect to see daily production top a million and a half barrels per day by this summer.
And while most of the attention is focused on Texas drillers, there are more opportunities here than you might first think — and bigger is rarely better.
If it were, you wouldn’t expect Occidental Petroleum — the largest Texas oil producer — to be upstaged by a small infrastructure company like Primoris Services, which recently inked a $2 million contract in the Eagle Ford.
But as you can see, that was the case:
And considering almost half of the oil and gas rigs in the U.S. are drilling into Texas soil, I can safely assume the self-assured kid I met earlier won’t have to worry about being gainfully employed when he is handed a diploma.
Until next time,
Keith Kohl
Check us out on YouTube!A true insider in the technology and energy markets, Keith’s research has helped everyday investors capitalize from the rapid adoption of new technology trends and energy transitions. Keith connects with hundreds of thousands of readers as the Managing Editor of Energy & Capital, as well as the investment director of Angel Publishing’s Energy Investor and Technology and Opportunity.
For nearly two decades, Keith has been providing in-depth coverage of the hottest investment trends before they go mainstream — from the shale oil and gas boom in the United States to the red-hot EV revolution currently underway. Keith and his readers have banked hundreds of winning trades on the 5G rollout and on key advancements in robotics and AI technology.
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