Give us your thoughts about this reader's letter

It's not often that we print letters to the editor, but I thought our readers might enjoy this one in response to my December column ("Seeking intelligent solutions to an aging energy workforce"). The writer seems to believe that the petroleum industry has created the worker shortages by concentrating its activities in Houston and the Gulf Coast, which he calls "dreary, foggy, cloudy, polluted, and [an] ugly place most of the year."

The writer is a Californian who I will keep anonymous so as not to embarrass him. I was sorely tempted to write him back or respond to him in this month's Editor's Comment. Instead, I thought it might be better to give our readers an opportunity to respond to his contentions.

So, here's your chance, OGFJ readers. What are your thoughts about this? Is the oil and gas industry too centralized in "Houston and the Gulf Coast?" Has this contributed to the aging workforce and the shortage of qualified workers, including petroleum engineers and other professionals? Is Houston a "dreary" place to live? And, if you have any solutions to any of this, feel free to offer them up. Send your responses directly to me at [email protected]. We'll print the best ones, in whole or in part, in the next issue of OGFJ.

Here is the unedited letter from our California reader:

Mr. Stowers,
While you mentioned the petroleum industry has had to offer larger starting salaries to new petroleum engineering graduates in order to acquire only some of the talent it needs to stay relevant, it appears you glossed over the fact that the industry has shot itself in the foot over the years by consolidating their businesses to Houston and the Gulf Coast.

Before the 1980s, California had a robust array of oil-and-gas and engineering companies where new petroleum engineering graduates could work, including major engineering offices for Exxon (Thousand Oaks), Chevron (San Ramon), Fluor (Aliso Viejo), Bechtel (San Francisco), C.F. Braun (now DBA as KBR; Alhambra), Parsons E&C (Pasadena), and many various equipment manufacturers around the Los Angeles basin. Many of these companies have withdrawn their engineering offices from the region for Houston and other Gulf locales.

But I think it's quite telling that Chevron, Bechtel, Parsons, Occidental, Jacobs Engineering, and until very recently, Fluor, all maintain their headquarters in California, while shoving most of the engineering and technical work to Houston where the hourly rate is lower, H1B Indian Immigrants are easier to source, and cheap and cheesy 1980s office space is plentiful.

Surely if California is a worthwhile place to maintain a headquarters subject to its corporate tax rate, and the high-salaried executives are willing to stomach the state income tax (although its significantly regressive), then perhaps the boost the industry needs to attract young talent is a change of scenery.

Houston is a dreary, foggy, cloudy, polluted, and ugly place most of the year. Although it's a growing hub for itinerant youth looking for their first job, many college students in California, who go to the nation's most highly-ranked technical universities (Stanford, Cal-Berkeley, Caltech, UCLA, UC San Diego, etc.) simply reject the energy industry because it forces them to work in a place that could give a damn about aesthetics for the sake of a few extra bucks. That's not sexy. To work at the gorgeous Chevron complex in San Ramon, California is but a pipe-dream to anyone under 40, but working at Apple, Facebook, Salesforce.com, and Google are within reach to many of the best and brightest young Californians.

The industry needs to start distancing itself from the Houston, Texas A&M, and UT engineering cabal where the talent is lacking due to the pervasive incestuousness of the grading and networking scheme. We don't want to work in Greenspoint, we don't want to live in Katy, and we don't want our kids to grow up with a "twang."

You missed the details and defaulted to the assumption we're all politically biased against oil-and-gas. The industry's problem is Houston and its arrogance in thinking we all want to live there.

Anonymous
Thousand Oaks, California

Have an opinion about this? Email Don at [email protected].