Actuaries in the Energy/Oil & Gas Industries

[Anonymous]

To any passersby,

Are there any Actuaries who have taken the "Big Tent" to heart and made the leap to other industries, specifically Energy. Please share your experiences. I made the jump a few months ago and am anxious to hear from others.

[Enough Exams Already]

I am interested to hear how your actuarial skills and training apply in the energy industry. Are you looking at feasibility and profitability studies?

[Anonymous]

I work in the Risk Control area of an Natural Gas/Power Trading company. My role is to calculate, interpret, and monitor the quantitative metrics used in managing the trading business, like P&L, value-at-risk, mark-to-market. I don't draw on any one specific skill-set I picked up as an Actuary, but rather the general base of knowledge that any Actuary would pick in the normal course of his/her career (i.e. Accounting, quantitative analytics, programming, legal).

One observation though : the Energy industry is quite a bit more fast-paced than insurance. Commodity prices change daily and exhibit high volatility. Somewhat faster than the premium rates for a whole life product!

[slam]

Energy man:

I went the other way. In my younger days, I spent a number of years trading energy derivatives (mostly oil and oil products, but a fair amount of natural gas), I burnt out and decided to take the slower pace of pension consulting and actuarial exams.

[Need_A_New_Career]

I tried to get into derivative portfolio management a couple of years ago but was unsuccessful. In short, I was told that they were looking for MBAs, even if they were fresh out of school. Since then, I've been kicking around the idea of returning to school, but the timing just hasn't been right.

Lately, I've been trying to learn more about energy trading, weather derivatives, etc. I'd be very interested to learn more about these types of positions. My fiancee is going to be starting med school next summer, very likely in another state, and I might try to switch then.

Any suggestions?

[DW Simpson]

Need_A_New_Career, obviously our experience is but one company, but what we've seen is a substantial contraction in those types of positions this year. We have a "Data Mining, Financial Engineering, Quants & Derivatives" page on our site on which I scramble to keep representative jobs, yet we talk to a lot of companies doing derivatives/trading types of things. Certainly that could bounce back in the time it takes to earn an MBA, though. - Claude

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: D.W. Simpson Webmaster on 2001-11-08 15:12 ]</font>

[Enough Exams Already]

I tried to get into derivative portfolio management a couple of years ago but was unsuccessful. In short, I was told that they were looking for MBAs, even if they were fresh out of school. Since then, I've been kicking around the idea of returning to school, but the timing just hasn't been right.


I remember that Heriot-Watt University in Scotland has a distance learning MBA that is supposed to be very highly regarded; I seem to recall either Forbes or Fortune ratng it very highly, even against residential MBA programs at nationally-ranked schools here in the US. You might look into pursuing it. Links to the program should be on their website. That way, with the combination of an MBA, work experience and actuarial training, you should be extremely competitive.

Just a thought....