All occupations · #771 of 1,410 by volume
Petroleum Engineers
SOC 17-2171, in the architecture and engineering major group. 12 PERM filings in DOL's current disclosure window, 12 certified and 0 denied.
Too few cases for a rate
12 decided filings, so there's no approval rate here. Across every PERM case DOL decided in this window, 3.20% were denied. At that rate a file this size comes back clean most of the time whatever the occupation did, so a percentage would be a fact about how few cases there are. Telling a clean record apart from the field takes about 117 decided cases.
Median wage
$137,500
all PERM $103,272
Filings
12
#771 of 1,410
Approval
—
withheld: 12 decided
Median days
384
93 faster than the field
Median offered wage
$137,500median of 12 filings, too few decided to rank
Approval rate
not shownunder 30 decided
Median days to decision
384 daysmiddle of 12 decided, too few to rank
Who files this job
The sponsors and firms with the most PERM filings under this code, and the states the work sits in.
Sponsors filing it
- MURPHY EXPLORATION PRODUCTION COMPANY USA 2 filings
- APACHE CORPORATION 1 filings
- Bison Management Services 1 filings
- Durango Resources Corp. 1 filings
- GREEN RESERVE ENERGY LLC 1 filings
- IPCOS INC 1 filings
The employers with the most applications under this code. 7 of 12 filings, 58% of the total.
Firms filing it
- Berry Appleman Leiden LLP 3 filings
- Murthy Law Firm 2 filings
- Bakken Law 1 filings
- BUCKLEY KING LPA 1 filings
- Caplan and Earnest LLC 1 filings
- Conte Law Firm Pllc 1 filings
The law firms named on the most applications under this code. 9 of 12 filings, 75% of the total.
Where the jobs are
- Texas 8
- Colorado 1
- Louisiana 1
- North Dakota 1
- Wyoming 1
The worksite state on the application, which is where the job is and not where the company is headquartered. Volume by state across everyone is on the state map. These 5 states cover 12 of 12 filings.
Where this sits in the ranking
Ranked 771 of 1,410 by volume: 770 filed at least as many filings, and 639 filed no more.
- Just above
- Sociologists 12 filings
- Just below
- Epidemiologists 12 filings
Other architecture and engineering roles
Occupations sharing this one's SOC major group, which is carried in the first two digits of the code. Wages inside a group still swing hard, because the group holds every seniority level and every metro.
- #775 Electronics Engineers, Except Computer, Non-R&D 11 filings · 1 denied
- #763 Mechanical Engineers, Non-R&D 12 filings · none denied
- #751 Electrical Engineers, R&D 13 filings · none denied
- #747 Cartographers and Photogrammetrists 13 filings · 3 denied
- #742 Industrial Safety and Health Engineers 14 filings · 2 denied
- #801 Mining and Geological Engineers, Including Mining Safety Engineers 11 filings · none denied
Reading the wage
This is the median wage employers committed to in federal filings for this occupation. It mixes every experience level and every metro, and it's a floor: the employer must offer at least the prevailing wage DOL determines for the occupation, level and county. Across all PERM filings the middle half of offered wages runs $45,178 to $141,357, so a figure inside that band is unremarkable whichever occupation it belongs to.
What these numbers don't say
- The code is the identity
- Two SOC codes can carry the same job title, so a title that looks duplicated on the ranking is two different occupations. Match on the code when you're checking a specific filing.
- A median isn’t an offer
- It's the middle of every wage committed to for this occupation across the country, entry level and principal alike. The same role's medians swing hard by worksite, which the state map shows directly.
- Approval isn’t about the occupation
- The denial rate moves with what happened in the filing rather than with the job title. The measured factors are on the denial risk page, published as separate rates.
- Nothing here is pending
- Every case in DOL's disclosure files carries a decision date, so a case still waiting is in none of these counts. Where the queue stands today is on the processing times page.
The window these figures cover
DOL's FY2026 Q3 and FY2025 Q4 and New Form FY2024 Q4 and FY2024 Q4 PERM disclosure files, unioned and de-duplicated by case number: 373,939 cases. Every case in them carries a decision, so nothing here counts what’s still pending. How each figure is built, and what it can and can't answer, is set out in the methodology.
Weighing an offer?
Compare it against this median, then check the state map, where the same occupation's medians swing hard by worksite.
Setting one?
All 1,410 occupations sort together on the wages page, and denial rates show how outcome moves with the offered wage.
Case data: DOL quarterly disclosure files (flag.dol.gov) · data through Jun 30, 2026 · quarterly
Employers and firms: Derived from the disclosure corpus · data through Aug 26, 2026 · rebuilt with each quarterly ingest