Penn State petroleum and natural gas engineering students are learning that the demand for their skills is almost as great as America's demand for oil.

"They want people so bad that they're willing to bring you in for a lot of money," said Daniel Lopus, president of the Penn State chapter of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, referring to big oil companies' recruitment of him and his peers.

"My freshman summer, I earned $4,000 a month for my job [for an oil company]," Lopus (senior-petroleum and natural gas engineering) said.

Petroleum engineers also have one of the highest starting salaries out of college of any major, Lopus added.

The Devon Energy Corporation is one company that actively recruits petroleum engineers.

"We [recruit at] about 20 campuses in North America," said Paul Poley, vice president of human resources for the company.

Oil companies need the expertise that current college students and graduates could bring to the field, he said.

"The oil and natural gas we're exploring for and producing today is a lot harder to get at than oil and natural gas was 20 years ago," Poley said. "That takes pretty smart people and pretty high technology."

Lopus said the oil companies Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Chevron all actively recruit Penn State students.

"Virtually all of our students graduating find jobs," said Turgay Ertekin, chairman of Penn State's petroleum and natural gas engineering program.

The program has been around for more than 70 years, Ertekin said. Enrollment and job placement decreased when oil prices lowered in the 1980s, but the field still existed, he said.

"The major oil producers, even when we had low oil prices, were still recruiting," he said.

Poley cited the price drop in the 1980s as the reason petroleum engineers are in such demand now.

"Students, for about 20 years, chose other fields to study," Poley said. "[This] left a hole in the industry of about two decades."

This has led the oil companies to require new talent, he said.

"The average age of petroleum engineers is 49," Poley said. "It won't be very long until all our engineers, geologists and tech people are ready to retire."

While the pay and the opportunities in the field are excellent, potential petroleum engineers should also be prepared to travel extensively, Ertekin said.

"Students should realize petroleum engineering is an international profession," he said. "There's always a possibility for every single graduating engineer to do overseas work with international companies."

Some students, however, see this as an advantage.

When listing the benefits of working with a big oil company, Lopus put having a high salary and international exposure on the same level.

"You can live wherever you want," Lopus said.

Ben Wingard (junior-petroleum and natural gas engineering), vice president of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, said opportunity for travel was one of the many advantages oil companies offered.

"There's really a lot of flexibility as to where you can work," Wingard said. "They offer really good salaries, and their benefit packages are really good, too."

Kyle Metzgar (sophomore-petroleum and natural gas engineering) said he switched to his current major after being drawn to its practical implications.

"I was an international politics major," Metzgar said. "I took a class freshman year about energy and realized that it was something crucial to society."