It really is. My first engineering job out of school was designing offshore drilling rigs (mostly service systems like ballast) and running shipyard projects. The economics of the industry have really gone through boom and bust cycles as the article says. I lucked out on timing. I got out just as a bust cycle was getting serious to go back to school as I had always planned to anyway.
They truly are magnificent structures. The popular image of the oil industry is one of roughnecks around ugly old drilling equipment next to a hole in the ground.
The size and scale of the engineering challenge, especially of deep water drilling, are incredible. I wish more people could be exposed to the marvels of engineering in the O&G industry.
I was interested to learn a while back that one of the rigs I worked on the design of, the Ocean Odyssey, was repurposed as an equatorial launch platform after it was damaged in a blowout. It was mothballed after Sea Launch ran into financial difficulties.
