Petroleum engineering programs prepare people to use math and science skills to drill for and process oil and natural gas. Students learn methods to refine oil and gas. They also learn about mining and drilling systems, storage, and transportation. They study safety and environmental issues.

Some people say that the world runs on petroleum. Indeed, it provides nearly half the energy that is used in the world. Maybe that is why it also has been called "black gold" and "the lifeblood of industrialized countries."

But crude oil and natural gas are not as easy to find and extract as they once were. In petroleum engineering, you learn how to solve problems related to finding and extracting oil and gas. You learn how to apply principles of science and math to locate promising rock formations. You determine the best way to drill for oil, pump it from the ground, and store it.

You also learn how to get more production from wells that have gone dry. For example, one technique is to pump steam deep underground to loosen up the oil. Another technique is to blast the rock formation with compressed water to get the oil flowing again. Given the data for a particular site, you may run simulations on computers to estimate which method would be most efficient.

Most of the time, the wellhead is far from the people who will use the oil or gas. That means you need to learn how to design pipelines or tanker terminals to move the petroleum products long distances.

You can get started in this field with a bachelor's degree. Usually that requires four or possibly five years of full-time study beyond high school. About 35 colleges in the U.S. have bachelor's programs in petroleum engineering. Some allow you to work straight through to a master's degree in five years.

Or you may take a separate master's program, which takes one or two years beyond the bachelor's. Your bachelor's might be in another field of engineering. A bachelor's in geology also may be acceptable, especially if you took some engineering courses. About 25 graduate schools of engineering offer a master's degree in petroleum engineering.