If I am going to pick a career in North America today, I will go for oil & gas sector; the demand is still there; especially now the oil price has picked up strongly from the low point in 2009.

Despite of the market volatility, one thing for certain is the rising demand for oil & gas globally will continue; and American companies are well positioned to take this great opportunity.

Positions are widely available today across American oil & gas companies; I believe this is one of the reasons why Texas and other oil producing States are doing so much better than the rest; and the good news is; the hiring does not stop just for technical engineers; in fact, many positions are non-technical positions; and positions are spread across Canada, United States and Mexico.

Let’s look at 3 of the major employers relating to this sector.

Exxon Mobil Corporation

Unless you live in the most remote areas in the world; Exxon Mobil is one of the most widely recognized brands worldwide and of course, it is headquartered in USA, and is certainly a major employer for both technical & non-technical positions.

The Group’s principal activities are exploration, production, transportation and sale of crude oil and natural gas. The Group operates through three segments: Upstream, Downstream and Chemicals. The Upstream operates to explore for and produce crude oil and natural gas. The Downstream segment manufactures and markets petroleum products. The Chemicals segment manufactures and markets petrochemicals.

Petroleo Brasileiro S.A.

Petroleo Brasileiro is certainly a shining star in Americas region; and its market capitalization is now catching up with Exxon Mobil Corporation; this is a remarkable strong Brazilian company.

The Group’s principal activities are production, exploration, distribution, import and export of oil, gas, energy and its by-products. It deals with oil refineries, production of crude oil, and natural gas and generation of energy. It has products like: gasoline, diesel, base oil, LPG, natural gas, kerosene, solvents, paraffin, fertilizers, sulfur and aviation fuels.

Such diversity has seen the company growing its workforce almost non-stop; and this includes many of its international operations; it is also acquiring a number of oil & gas projects in North America as well as developing them.

Schlumberger Ltd.

Our research team has picked up Schlumberger, which I questioned initially, but they were right. The big employers in addition to oil & gas companies are engineering firms. The Group’s principal activities are to provide oilfield services, supply technology, project management and information solutions to oil and gas industry.

The Oilfield Services supplies products, services and technical solutions to the oil and gas exploration and production industry.

These Services are organized into seven technology product lines: Wireline, Drilling and Measurements, Well Services, Well Completions and Productivity, Integrated Project Management, Data and Consulting Services and Schlumberger Information Solutions.

As you can see, this means, Schlumberger offers great employment opportunities to engineers and technical professionals providing oil & gas technology related services and analysis. The Information Solutions is also a big employer in the IT related services such as programmers.

We will cover more companies later on, stay tuned.

The above is extract from North American Oil & Gas Companies Guide which is now available from http://researchwhitepaper.com