Canada’s oil market recovery will be doomed to failure without younger workers

Canada’s oil industry is booming, but companies in the largest oil-producing province of Alberta are struggling to hire and retain skilled talent to take advantage of the opportunity for greater market access provided by the expanded Trans Mountain oil pipeline.

Analysts say Canadian crude oil production is growing and could grow the most of any producer this year.

But a talent shortage could make Canada’s renewed oil boom more difficult to sustain.

As Baby Boomers and Gen

Growing demand for talents

The University of Calgary in Alberta, where most Canadian energy companies are based, recently learned from industry contacts that companies are having difficulty hiring qualified workers. The university now plans to revive its oil and gas engineering program, which was suspended three years ago due to very low interest and a downturn in the industry during the pandemic.

“In recent months and years, some of our industry contacts and industry partners have increasingly told us that they are having trouble finding qualified engineers to hire in the energy industry,” Anders Nygren, associate dean of the Schulich School of Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Calgary, said last week to Amanda Stephenson of The Canadian Press.

The University of Calgary has suspended summer 2021 enrollment in its oil and gas engineering bachelor’s degree program due to a sharp decline in demand, with only 10 students registering for the degree in the two years prior to the suspension.

The university has not abandoned oil and gas studies – it still offers petroleum-related specializations within mechanical and chemical engineering. There are currently about 1,800 students in these programs, Nygren told The Canadian Press.

The decision to revive the oil and gas engineering program highlights the talent shortage the industry has faced in recent years, but also a surge in interest in petroleum-related courses, after years when younger generations viewed the sector as a villain in the fight to curb climate change .

In the wake of the 2022 energy crisis, energy security has increased in importance among businesses and consumers as many people have begun to realize that the world will continue to use oil and gas for decades and that the energy transition will not happen overnight.

Changing the workforce

Moreover, the rise of artificial intelligence and digitalization in the oil and gas industry has changed the perception that the sector only offers blue-collar jobs that would get young people dirty and contribute to global emissions.

However, while these two factors may have attracted some of the younger generation to work in the energy sector, the cyclical nature of the industry, with booms and busts, discourages many others, as do the working hours and relative lack of work-life balance that this generation craves WITH.

Oil and gas jobs pay well in Canada and elsewhere, but the next generation of talent is looking for well-paying jobs in other fields. For example, data centers are poaching IT, engineering and data analytics professionals from the oil patches.

Last year, an exploration and production (E&P) company executive commented on this in one of the Dallas Fed’s energy surveys:

“It’s hard to find labor. The stigma associated with dirty fossil fuels is scaring away younger talent.”

Some American talent, undeterred by the “dirty business” stigma, is being poached by tech companies, data centers, Tesla, SpaceX and other IT and engineering jobs. This results in fewer workers available for the oil and gas industry, which increases labor costs and overall project costs, potentially setting the stage for project delays.

But according to Tristan Goodman, president of the Canadian Association of Explorers and Producers industry group, the “bad narrative” that was dissuading talent from pursuing university degrees in oil and gas research has begun to change.

“Of course we need to continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but at the same time it is a product that benefits everyone in the world. “I think there’s a little more pragmatism in the system now,” Goodman told The Canadian Press.

Canadian industry associations want to promote jobs in this sector with new initiatives.

For example, Canadian energy services association Enserva launched the THINK Energy campaign in March, a nationwide awareness-raising strategy designed to showcase the lucrative careers available in the energy services sector.

According to Enserva, formerly the Petroleum Services Association of Canada, its newly launched Working Energy portal will address the talent shortage.

“There is currently a shortage of workers, drivers, tradespeople and more in the energy services industry, and Enserva hopes to connect job seekers with companies that need positions filled and create a long-term solution to this shortage,” said Enserva CEO Gurpreet Lail.

“Our sector must also come to grips with the absurd idea that Canadian energy is a dying industry. That’s just not the case,” notes Lail.

“The world will need our energy for a very long time, and we need talented people to help us innovate and produce it responsibly.”

Author: Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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