Gas fields are a gold mine for job-seeking students

GILLETTE, Wyo. — By 5:30 a.m., Jay Bazile has already packed his lunch and arrived at the Patterson UTI Energy drilling rig site in Utah to relieve the night crew. The 26-year-old floor hand immediately goes to work in the maw of hydraulics and steel.

"You see what real work is like. You see how valuable the people in the field really are," said Bazile, who just more than a month ago spent his afternoons on the campus of the Colorado School of Mines in Golden.

Bazile expects to gain a few pounds of muscle this summer working as a roughneck, earning enough money to cover tuition for his next three semesters of college.

"It's expensive. I've taken out some loans. What I make this summer should cover tuition for the rest of my school," said Bazile, who is studying petroleum engineering.

Forget the lawnmower or the office internship. College tuition is increasing faster than the rate of inflation at many schools. That means summer is less of a "break" than a time to earn money for the next semester.

In addition to the $22 per hour starting wage and all the overtime they can handle, students like Bazile are attracted to the drilling rigs for what could turn into a sustainable and high-tech career.

"It should attract the brightest who want to use the latest technology and the latest software," said Marc Smith, executive director of the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States. "When you're drilling three or four miles into the earth to target a very specific area that may be 3 or 4 feet thick, that's every bit as technical as putting a man on the moon."

Bazile is among several college students who have attended the weeklong course at the Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Training Center in Casper. Industry leaders say they need to recruit about 1,000 new workers to the Rockies each year to man what they say is a sustained buildup in natural gas production.

Wyoming's rig count, for example, climbed to 106 rigs at the end of April, the highest since 1985, according to the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. The industry is poised to drill thousands of wells throughout the Rockies as natural gas production declines in the Gulf Coast and other regions of the United States.

Though the industry is focused on attracting full-time workers, the need for dependable and drug-free employees also creates an opportunity for college students.

"We had a couple of students from West Virginia last summer. They said they worked 10 days and made over $3,000, and that was enough to pay for a whole semester," said Chris Corlis, director of training for the Wyoming Contractors Association.