Are Any Oil Rig Companies Still Hiring Workers This Recession?

The newspapers reported that oil rig companies like Halliburton and Schlumberger plan to lay off their workers because of the recession. Canadian oil and gas salaries have dropped by an average of 6%, with entry level roustabout jobs hit the hardest at 12%. While there is plenty of bad news throughout the world economy, the oil and gas industry is almost untouched in comparison to finance and heavy industry.

If you are looking for offshore drilling jobs, don’t give up yet. Bad news sells newspapers, which is why journalists like to report them. But there is also good news in the oil industry. Although Halliburton and Schlumberger say they are letting go of people, other companies like Noble Corporation and Transocean are hiring. The latter two offshore drilling companies are rolling out 15 new offshore oil rigs and hiring 3000 new workers. But do you see this on the front page? Not very likely. This kind of news is reserved for the financial pages, usually meant only for the eyes of investors.

Even though we are in the middle of a recession, oil rig companies still have to hire new workers for roustabout jobs and other oil rig jobs. Why? Despite the temporary drop in oil prices, the Asian giants, China and India, are still posting economic growth of 6.5% and 5% respectively. They still need oil, while many governments are still building up their national strategic reserves of oil. Why do you think oil is still around $40-$50 per barrel, rather than $10 per barrel like in the 1980s? Long term job prospects for roustabout jobs and offshore drilling jobs are very bright – the International Energy Agency expects China to exceed the energy consumption of the US by 2020, and also projects that both China and India will consume 300% more oil in 20 years time.

As you can see, both short term and long term demand for oil is there. That means offshore drilling companies will continue drilling for oil and hiring workers. CNN Money and Bloomberg News have actually reported quite a lot good news for the oil and gas industry. The gigantic Transocean has an order backlog of $33 billion in 2007, and even relatively tiny Schlumberger has an order backlog of $1.77 billion this year. Everyday, just Exxon alone spends $79 million to look for new oil fields and drill for oil. Even in the middle of this recession, oil companies are spending $400 billion looking for new oil fields.

Those are just the short term prospects. When we look further ahead, Exxon intends to spend $150 billion over the next 5 years to look for new oil fields. IEA economic analysts have reported that $20 trillion will be invested over the next 25 years to look for new oil fields.

With so much money being spent, how can there not be offshore drilling jobs? Add in the fact that many oil workers were last hired 30 to 40 years ago and are near retirement, it is obvious that oil rig companies will continue to hiring workers. As long as you realize that in today’s economy, most oil rig employment will be with the (relatively) smaller oil service contractors, finding jobs should manageable.

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by CALVIN LOH