A developing shortage of oil and gas specialists in the US is receiving new attention from state and federal governments. Because governments at all levels rightly worry about energy supplies, and because those supplies correspond roughly to the number of knowledgeable people pursuing them, the concern is appropriate. Governments can't solve the oil and gas industry's recruiting problems, however. The industry needs to ask itself why young people, hearing what they regularly do about oil and gas companies, would want to work for one.
Industry and government officials addressed the workforce issue in a July 8 hearing of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Minerals Resources (OGJ Online, July 14, 2004). Industry testimony addressed the rising average age of the workforce; looming mass retirements; low college enrollments in key industry disciplines; and the obvious relationships between market instability, cyclical layoffs, and staffing challenges.
Specific actions
North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven presented a study by the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, which he represented at the hearing, calling for specific actions by state and federal governments and the industry. From the federal government, for example, the study urges funding for pilot programs to deal with labor shortages, education tax credits for oil-field training programs, and support for a public-relations campaign on the industry's importance.
Whether governments should extend themselves so deeply into industry affairs is debatable. But IOGCC correctly understands that adequacy of the workforce bears on its official concern for energy supply. If nothing else, its initiative asserts that the industry's personnel efforts are inadequate.
Markets aren't wholly to blame. While careers that gyrate with commodity prices do little for the industry's allure, students and young professionals shun oil and gas careers for other reasons. Many of them just don't like oil and gas companies. Why would they? Popular culture tells them that oil and gas work contradicts natural and human values.
Last week, Greenpeace railed against construction of LNG terminals on the Californian and Mexican coasts in a report entitled, "Liquid Natural Gas: A roadblock to a clean energy future." Greenpeace worries that new supplies of gas delivered to market as LNG will crowd out renewable energy. So it faults LNG trade for, among other things, stimulating gas development and changing economies and landscapes. This objection appears in a chapter entitled, "LNG's Global Blood Trail."
Also last week, the Natural Resources Defense Council issued an analysis complaining that high oil and gas prices raise costs for energy consumers and profits for producers. With this assertion of the evident, NRDC bashes "today's energy policy," which it says "keeps us chained to the interests of big energy companies and unstable oil-producing regimes." Underlying NRDC's argument is the presumption that anything that benefits energy companies must conflict with national welfare.
Traditionally, oil and gas companies respond to distortions like these with silence. They seem to think response confers status the charges don't deserve. Sensible people, they assume, know extremism when they see it and discount the message.
That's all probably true. But the main problem for industry isn't the extremist message. The main problem is the industry's reaction of calculated indifference. Groups like Greenpeace and NRDC hurt the industry not by being right on energy issues, which they seldom are, but by tricking oil and gas companies into looking uncommitted to their own work. Popular culture responds more to drama than to debate. To popular culture, now working so strongly against the industry's staffing prospects, lack of commitment is intolerable.
Showing commitment
In its chapter on LNG's alleged "blood trail," Greenpeace argues that gas development aligned with LNG projects would aggravate or cause human depravation and natural degradation in several countries. Allegations like those, exaggerated as they are, influence attitudes, especially young ones. Do oil and gas companies believe them? Do they think LNG creates a trail of blood? If not, they should say so.
More frequently than they do now, industry leaders should show publicly that they believe in what their companies do. They should defend their work when it comes under attack, especially from extremists. Regular demonstrations of commitment would help recruitment by raising the stature of oil and gas work in popular culture. They'd also summon new commitment from workers who've survived a price cycle or two.
