The Petroleum Engineer Pipeline is Running Dry

A talent drought:

Trained and knowledgeable workers are retiring or moving to other industries. The average oil and gas worker is 44 years old, a recent report from Deloitte found. The industry has mostly rehired the 15,000 workers it laid off during the 2020 crash, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Statistics. But the workforce numbers have been on a long downward trend since 2015, when oil prices took a plunge after a supply glut. The volatility of the industry — the cycle of laying off and hiring people — is another factor that makes the jobs unappealing, the Deloitte report said.

"Half of oil and gas professionals, I believe, would gladly leave the oil and gas industry tomorrow if they could get a renewable energy job," said Dar-Lon Chang, who worked as an engineer at ExxonMobil for 16 years before resigning in 2019 over concerns about climate change. A recent global survey by AirSwift found that 82 percent of current oil and gas workers would consider switching to another energy sector in the next three years, up from 79 percent last year and 73 percent in 2020. Fifty-four percent of those thinking about leaving picked the renewable industry as a preferred destination. 

"Retention is a massive, massive problem," Dennett said. "They're losing their most expert, skilled, and experienced technicians, engineers, designers, operators, mechanics … I think they will be starved of new talent."