February 5, 2025
Ferris State student gains hands-on experience during internship at Miller Energy Company
Rory Gabriel, a December 2024 graduate with a degree in Business Administration and a minor in Small Business Management. Gabriel had his internship with Miller Energy Company in Traverse City, an oil & gas exploration and production company.
Before Gabriel was a business administration student, he was drawn to petroleum engineering. While he was no longer interested in engineering he realized he could still be a part of this important and dynamic industry. At Miller Energy, Gabriel started as a general intern, but as time passed, he saw his internship evolve into a finance role. Some of his tasks were finance modeling, reporting, and creating business strategies. At his internship, he noted that “it’s one of those industries that you feel really good about because you’re constantly providing people power and providing people with energy.”
Gabriel also shared his excitement, “It's really fun to see and just look at how we produce oil here, and that allows us to have our lights on… it’s that kind of thing you don’t really think about when you flip on an energy switch”
Working in finance for the oil and gas industry presented its own challenges. Gabriel described it as “really complex,” noting the industry’s unpredictability. Oil and gas is an absolute nightmare to work with for finance since it’s all over the board,” he explained. Unlike retailers, who control product pricing, the oil and gas industry is regulated and influenced by various external factors, creating a dynamic Gabriel found both challenging and exciting.
One of the highlights for Gabriel was working with industry-specific financial programming. In oil and gas, financial health is assessed using unique metrics like EBITAX (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Amortization, and Exploration costs), a variation on the standard EBITA metric specific to the oil and gas industry. “It’s something totally new, but it’s fun because I got to tack on these extra things that are only specific to the oil and gas industry. It added a little spice to the financial knowledge I already had,” he said.
While working in a unique field like oil and gas, Gabriel explained these niche fields always have something new to learn. One moment in Gabriel's internship that stood out the most was visiting a job site. He started at Miller Energy’s headquarters in Rosebush, Michigan, at the shop and saw first-hand newly explored wells and oil rig work. Seeing the actual production of the oil compared to the spreadsheets on his computer was eye-opening.
Gabriel’s advice for future interns is to “Don’t give up, even if you keep getting rejected, there is always going to be some silver lining to those rejections that it might not have been a great place to work in the first place… Put yourself somewhere where you might be valued better. And to also utilize every resource possible to your advantage… keep applying something will always come your way.”
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics Occupational Outlook, the employment of Financial Analysts is expected to grow by 9% in the next 10 years.