Oil geologists locate oil reserves for extraction.
Anyone who has kept even a casual eye toward business news knows that the petroleum industry's profits continue to grow as automobiles become more common around the world. To keep up with this increase in demand, oil companies require geologists to scout for and locate oil reserves and create strategies for the most efficient extraction of the resource as possible.
Average Salary
The average annual salary for geologists who work in the oil and natural gas extraction industries is $127,560 as of May 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook. A mid-level petroleum geologist with four to six years of experience in the field earns an average annual salary of $103,502 as of January 2011, according to Salary.com, although half of all similarly experienced geologists earn annual salaries between $90,325 and $121,102.
Experience and Salary
Geologists who remain in the petroleum industry for their entire careers may expect their earnings to increase dramatically as they accrue experience. The average salary for a petroleum engineer with less than four years of experience in the industry ranges from $58,440 to $99,441 as of January 2011, according to PayScale. Oil geologists with five to nine years in the industry earn, on the average, between $71,960 and $117,988 each year, while veterans with at least a decade of experience prospecting for petroleum earn between $77,902 and $197,122 annually.
Salaries Around the Nation
Like many positions in extraction industries, salaries for petroleum engineers are highest in industry hotspots. Petroleum geologists who work in Houston receive the highest average annual salary, $161,252 as of January 2011, according to Salary Expert. Those in Dallas also receive salaries that dwarf earnings in most other cities, with average salaries of $128,365. Petroleum geologists who work in Atlanta earn the smallest average salaries, $68,174 each year. Geologists in half the cities surveyed by Salary Expert earned average salaries between $70,948 and $80,976.
Comparison to All Geologist Salaries
Because of the income involved with the oil industry, geologists who work in the petroleum industry earn much higher salaries than their counterparts in other industries. The average salary for all geologists in all industries is $79,160 as of May 2008, according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook. Petroleum engineers earn average salaries that are 161 percent of the average for all geologists.
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