TPT September 2016

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96 SEPTEMBER 2016
G LOBA L MARKE T P L AC E
When the United States reaches full
employment, oilfield services companies and
drillers could face a shor tage of workers
“I don’t see how the [US oil] industry comes back to any level
of activity that is busy without a breakneck amount of chasing
bodies, and there just aren’t going to be enough to go around.”
The speaker was Jeff Bush, president at Denver-based CSI
Recruiting. The “bodies” to be chased are the many oilfield
workers who, as Mr Bush told the business news TV channel
CNBC, will not be easy to round up when the current boom-
and-bust cycle in the industry has run its course.
Government data released in July showed the US added a
whopping 287,000 jobs in June, and the nation’s unemployment
rate held below 5 per cent. The question, according to CNBC’s
Tom DiChristopher, is whether workers flushed out of the
industry and into a resurgent US labour market will head back
to the oil patch.
Mr DiChristopher observed that recruiters have long warned
that layoffs could come back “to haunt an industry still dealing
with a shortage of mid-career workers following the 1980s
oil bust.” It is no minor concern. Current projections indicate
that the US oil industry will need to hire tens of thousands
of workers over the next two and a half years as oil prices
recover and drillers stand up rigs. (“Oil and Gas Industry
Could Hire 100,000 Workers – If It Can Find Them,” 8 July)
The recruitment agency Airswift told CNBC that an estimated
291,500 energy jobs have been lost worldwide since the
start of the oil price downturn in 2014. And Janette Marx, the
Airswift chief operating officer, said that – once demand for
skilled staff returns – employers should anticipate a significant
increase in the cost of attracting and retaining talent.
› While Goldman Sachs stands by its own estimate that US
energy companies will need to attract 80,000 to 100,000
employees, the investment bank believes that high pay in the oil
and gas industry will facilitate the effort. Central to Goldman’s
thinking is its belief that many oilfield services companies have
retained experienced staff in lower-rank positions throughout
the wave of layoffs, ready to resume their former jobs when
oil prices recover and activity ramps up. These “banked” and
restored employees would thereupon preserve and build upon
the efficiency gains achieved during the downturn.
Gladney Darroh, president of the Houston-based energy
recruiting firm Piper-Morgan Associates, is strongly sceptical
of the Goldman conviction that re-staffing will not be a
problem, and that hiring and training will be confined to the
lowest skill levels. “This whole idea that we’ve got this whole
group we have sort of demoted for the time being that are still
in the organisation that we can quickly promote back up?”
Mr Darroh told CNBC, “That’s a fairy tale.”
› Since the layoffs in the industry seem to have peaked, we
may not have to wait long to learn which view prevails.
Mr DiChristopher noted that, on 7 July, the Chicago-based
outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that
US-based energy sector employers cut 42 per cent fewer jobs
in the April-June period than in the first quarter.
Monitoring of Europe’s gas and oil pipelines
gets an assist from data collected by
surveillance satellite
The European Space Agency, a Paris-based intergovernmen-
tal organisation with 22 member states, is dedicated to the
exploration of space. But a recent ESA report was informed by
some decidedly ground-level findings on pipeline inspection.
Worldwide, gas and oil pipelines extend 1.24 million miles.
Within the countries of the European Union, gas pipes stretch
86,992 miles, while an additional 24,858 miles of pipe carry
oil and related products. Final distribution lines service homes
and workplaces. In the main this network is not very deep,
lying some five feet underground.
According to the ESA, which furnished this information,
in Europe almost half of all failures in high-pressure gas
transmission pipelines can be traced to excavations,
construction work and deep ploughing. Aerial inspections
conducted at three-week intervals enable operators to identify
17 per cent of the problems presenting along the pipeline
route. The public, with a 37 per cent detection rate, does
better. But more consistent and reliable troubleshooting would
obviously be beneficial.
Through its Integrated Applications Promotions programme,
the ESA helps companies to develop and deploy new
space-based services in an operational setting. This spring,
the organisation announced one such initiative: a system,
from the Dutch startup Orbital Eye, that uses radar images
from satellites in combination with smart software to detect
suspicious activity in the vicinity of oil and gas pipelines,
including the slightest ground movement. (“Monitoring
Pipelines from Space,” 6 June)
By means of a tablet app, the pipeline operator alerted to
a potential threat can then dispatch field personnel to the
site. With a connection to a central database via terrestrial
networks and satcoms, the app is functional even in desert
areas and other remote locations.
Orbital Eye avails itself of the EU’s Copernicus programme
with its growing constellation of Sentinel satellites, which
provide free high-quality observation data, day and night,
independent of weather conditions. Sentinel-1B, launched in
April, is expected to allow for wider coverage – to regions of
Asia, Africa and the US – thus enabling Orbital Eye to extend
its reach. The ESA reported that a major African pipeline
operator has already signed up for the company’s service.
Elsewhere in oil and gas . . .
› On 8 July, with its largest storage facility, Rough, not yet
back in service after a 42-day outage, the UK gas system
operator said Britain’s heating requirements for the winter
would be handily met from a variety of sources. According
to National Grid, its own available supply of 605 MMSCFD
(million standard cubic feet per day) will be supplemented by
natural gas imports from Norway, expected to increase from
October to March by as much as 18 per cent from a year
earlier. Supplies of Dutch and Belgian fuel, as well as LNG
imports, are also expected to increase.