Re: Career path for petrophysicists?
Mat,
In my experience petrophysicists do often fall within a highly specialized and introvert work group. This is mainly due to the large amount of formula's and graphs (check out slbs petrophysical chartbook or
http://www.spec2000.net/ to have a look in what your getting yourself into. As put forward by DKarlstadt a job should be enjoyable in the first place and have career potential in the second (at least in my book). From your reply I judge your worried about where you can arrive in five years, but are you even sure you'll enjoy the first role.
Of course, the prize could be worth the risk of getting in depth with petrophysics and it may be the best option you have (market is quite small at the moment) and therefor a good choice. In that case I think you should realize that petrophysics is often about fluids and what they do with your rock and knowledge of that stuff gives you huge advantage when modeling and engineering a reservoir. I feel it would be a very logical and smart step to go from petrophysics into reservoir engineering, but will you enjoy the first years?
just my oppinion, hope it helped.
cheers,
Clive