Offshore industry seeks personnel
By Alice Adams | May 9, 2014
The most daunting hurdles for energy companies are the critical shortages of engineers as well as skilled workers.
Offshore work is available for petroleum engineers, who design the operation and then supervise drilling activities throughout the life cycle of the project. The rigs, themselves, operate at all times.
Other offshore engineering needs may include jobs for environmental engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical and industrial engineers.
At this year's offshore conferences, the outlook often sounded like a mantra: Rigs are drilling deeper wells and drilling in deeper water as well as in harsher conditions. Technology often makes these goals easier to accomplish, but it also requires experienced professionals to optimize its impact.
The International Energy Agency predicted continued growth of world demand for energy by at least one-third by 2035, and this demand is pushing the oil and gas industry to work harder and faster to develop new fields and increased production.
In spite of the current and projected demand, however, the most daunting hurdles for energy companies are the critical shortages of engineers as well as skilled workers. This environment has created the "great race" for recruiters to find, hire, train and retain enough talent.
Global recruiter Jo McGregor, director at McGregor Consultants Ltd., of Aberdeen, Scotland, said while women have long been a part of the industry, more recently woman are moving in to new areas of engineering which is a incredibly positive trend.
Thomas H. Graham, chair of the Center for Energy Workforce Development, told Barbara Lundin in the February issue of "Fierce Energy," utilities and affiliates have made great strides in developing better training programs to create the next generation of the energy work force. We have to develop and implement strategies now to ensure we can fill these positions with the right people, increase diversity in student and candidate pools, and create a pipeline of potential workers with the right skills at the right time. Our industry faces unprecedented changes in talent development, and the need for collaboration has never been stronger."
During this year's Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, the focus of recruiting was the same - more engineers, geoscientists and more experienced platform workers. A recent survey of area offshore recruiters brought the same general and brief reply: "We're always looking for good people."
Always? That's probably been the case since the shale plays in North America were activated, and fracking was embraced by just about every production company on the planet.
More specifically, recruiters across Houston and international firms said there remains a demand for people from the geosciences - geophysicists, geologists and geoscientists - and individuals in all engineering disciplines who have deepwater experience, such as subsea, drilling and completion engineers.
McGregor said the skills gap remains a challenge for offshore recruiters.
"It is always a challenge to find suitably qualified/experienced personnel for projects and I can't see this changing," she said. "However the industry, as a whole, is focused on closing this gap, and there are some fantastic graduate programs, modern apprenticeship schemes and ongoing internal training opportunities that create opportunity for promotion."
In addition, she is seeing opportunities for members of the work force to be trained to take on higher skills and more responsibility.
As a global recruiter and a well construction specialist, McGregor sees a continuing strong demand for mechanical engineers.
"The oil industry has become so specialized, a good, hard-working mechanical engineer can be trained and supported within oil companies and oil service companies to become experts in a field," she said. "It's an exciting time with a lot of investment into training hard-working individuals."
John Faraguna, managing director of oil and gas for Hays Oil & Gas, a global staffing and recruiting company, said: "Businesses are relying heavily on contract workers, and permanent hiring is reaching an all-time high. Yet, with a growing number of new workers entering the industry and the baby boomer generation at or nearing retirement age, employers will continue to be faced with an exodus of knowledge and skill set in the coming years. This means businesses will need to ensure they have the right people and succession plans in place to ensure their growth."
Notable in the evolution of the energy industry in general, many large oil companies that once maintained a work force with all the skill sets are now moving to the model of project development and management fueled by contractors who bring the various areas of expertise to the board.