Oil: the final career frontier?

The oil industry puts state-of-the-art technology into some of the most hostile environments on earth. Roughnecks and riggers work alongside postgraduate engineers and scientists to find ever-diminishing reserves.

In the South China Sea they face danger from sharks, tropical storms and occasional pirate raids. In deserts and jungles the threat comes from disease and dehydration. In the North Sea they work far from land, sometimes in mountainous seas.

But the rewards can be considerable both in cash and career terms. The oilfields offer an ambitious young scientist or engineer - many of them women - a chance to learn at the sharp end of applied science in an environment where self-reliance is the key skill.