The Big Crew Change

• Average employee age working for a major operator or service company in the oil industry is between 49 and 52.
• Average industry retirement age is 55.
• 40% of the staff will be departing in the next 3-7 years.
• Take minimum of 3 years to develop basic industry operating competence and 10+ years in most professional disciplines.
• In the US in 2006 there was approximately 1700 people studying petroleum engineering compared to 11000 in 1993.
• Western oil companies struggle to attract and retain foreign nationals.
• Graduate recruits lack basic job-ready skills.
• National oil companies, particularly in Asia and the Middle East are hiring new local people in a bid to nationalise their workforces. This makes them secure for the future but leave a large gap between the young nationals and the older expat workers - in both age and culture.
• War for labour is driving up wages and thus production costs; low-cost labour moves to higher salary regions.
• Most majors have their own training facilities to ensure they can recruit and retain talented scientists and engineers; must be careful not to train an "elite" and lose knowledge transfer down to the field.
• Service sector is growing faster than the oil and gas companies; there are too few expierenced people in the industry to support growth and execution of planned projects - fortunatly there has been a slow down as a result of the financial crisis.
• The industry is no longer so attractive - partly because of the perchant for massive layoffs in slow periods, partly because people fear for the long term future of their careers as the industry is associsated (incorrectly) with monopolies, pollution, price fixing, supporting dictatorial regimes, etc, etc.
• No longer possible to buy the way out of problems.

Booz Allen Hamilton, 2006, "Labour and skills crisis could stall oil and gas boom"
Schlumberger Business Consulting, 2006, "Surviving the Skill Shortage"
The Oil Drum: Europe, The Big Crew Change: Turnover in the Oil workforce