Get oil and gas out of the ground. The best starting pay in engineering, tied to an industry that booms and busts.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Licensed engineer
$135,000
Engineer-in-training
$96,000
Senior or team lead
$200,000
The highest pay of any engineering discipline in Canada, and the least stable. In the 2015 to 2016 downturn thousands of Calgary engineers lost their jobs and new-grad hiring nearly stopped.
$85,000 to $100,000
Engineer-in-training (EIT) with a producer in Calgary
Field roles at well sites and oil sands plants pay a bit more plus a rotation allowance. Co-op students in oil and gas often earn $25 to $40 an hour, among the best co-op pay anywhere.
$150,000 to $200,000
Reservoir or drilling lead, 10 to 15 years in
Bonuses and company stock can add a lot in a good year. Independent consultants charge by the day and can earn more, with no security at all.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
Both ends are a four year engineering degree in Alberta, which sits at the cheaper end of Canadian engineering tuition, plus registering as an engineer in training, the yearly fee while you log your supervised experience, and the professional practice exam. The gap between the two figures is mostly which university and how many years you carry the trainee registration. Safety tickets for gas and first aid are usually paid by the employer. Paid co-op terms in the oil patch are well paid, so many graduates finish with little or no debt.
Alberta tuition is lower than Ontario's, and oil-patch co-op pay is high, so many graduates finish with little or no debt.
Bonuses and stock
Big in good years, gone in bad ones.
Flex days
Many Calgary offices give every second Friday off.
Rotation allowance and camp
On field and oil sands jobs.
Health, dental and a matched savings plan
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Degree, supervised experience, exam, licence. Most of it happens in Alberta.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Advanced Functions, Calculus, Physics and Chemistry are required for admission. Marks in the 80s at most schools.
Accredited engineering degree
4 to 5 years with co-op
Petroleum engineering at the University of Alberta, or oil and gas engineering at the University of Calgary. The University of Regina also has a program, and Memorial University in Newfoundland offers oil and gas engineering as a master's after a first degree. Chemical or mechanical engineering with an oil and gas focus works too.
Engineer-in-training
About 4 years
Register as an engineer-in-training (EIT) with APEGA (Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta) or your provincial regulator. Work under a licensed engineer. Log your experience.
Professional practice exam
During your EIT years
A law and ethics exam, written during your first years of work.
P.Eng (professional engineer) licence
After 4 years
Apply with your experience record and references. Now you can sign well designs and take legal responsibility for them.
Calculus and Advanced Functions
Required.
Physics
Required.
Chemistry
Required. Reservoir fluids are chemistry.
Earth science or geology
Helpful. You will spend a career thinking about rock.
Only licensed professional engineers can practise engineering or use the title. Most petroleum engineers register with APEGA (Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta). Your P.Eng (professional engineer) licence transfers to BC, Saskatchewan or Newfoundland with a simple application. APEGA charges about $500 a year for the licence. Offshore work off Newfoundland has extra survival and safety training on top.
Alberta
University of Alberta (Edmonton), University of Calgary.
Saskatchewan
University of Regina.
Newfoundland
Memorial University (St. John's), close to the offshore platforms. Oil and gas engineering there is a master's; the undergraduate route is process or mechanical engineering.
Anywhere else
Chemical or mechanical engineering, then an oil and gas job.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Well control certificate
Required to supervise drilling. Renewed every 2 years.
Reservoir simulation skills
The people who model how oil flows through rock get the office jobs that survive downturns.
Carbon capture, hydrogen and geothermal
Same rocks, same wells, new purpose. This is where the growth is as the energy transition unfolds.
MBA (master of business administration) or CFA (chartered financial analyst)
Calgary has a big energy finance scene.
H2S Alive (a gas safety course) and standard first aid
Required before you set foot on most sites. One-day courses.
A summer on a rig or in the field
Even as a labourer. It shows you know what a well site is.
Spreadsheets and Python
Reservoir work is data work.
A driver's licence
Field jobs mean hours on gravel roads.
Canada produces more oil today than it ever has, and the industry will need engineers for decades to run wells, clean them up and eventually close them. But fewer companies are hiring, automation has cut office headcount, and enrolment in petroleum programs fell sharply after the 2014 price crash. The skills transfer to carbon storage, geothermal and hydrogen. If you go in, go in with a plan B.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Reservoir engineer in Calgary: in by 7:30, run models of how oil and gas move through the rock, meet with geologists about where to drill next, and build the economics for a new well. Drilling engineer: on site at a rig in northern Alberta, watching the drilling data, adjusting the plan as the rock changes, on call around the clock. Field jobs run on rotations, such as 8 days on and 6 off.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Canada's proven oil reserves, almost all in the Alberta oil sands, are the third largest in the world after Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Most of it is too thick to pump, so engineers inject steam underground to thin it out first.
Oil went from over $100 a barrel in mid-2014 to under $30 in early 2016. Downtown Calgary office towers emptied out, and at the worst point roughly a third of the office space downtown sat vacant.
The first shipment of LNG (liquefied natural gas) left Kitimat, BC on June 30, 2025, from the LNG Canada plant, the largest private-sector investment in Canadian history. Petroleum engineers designed the wells that feed it.
Alberta has hundreds of thousands of oil and gas wells, and tens of thousands sit inactive. Plugging and cleaning them up is a growing job for petroleum engineers no matter what the oil price does.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students.