The writing is on the wall for O&G. It will certainly be around for our lifetime, but I think the golden years are gone. There's a lot of barriers facing the industry: bad stigma due to the new "wokeness" and climate change, depressed commodity prices, and issues with talent attraction and retention, just to name a few.
Lots of people wanting to get out of this industry, with most people sticking with it as they don't know what else to do and are afraid to make the jump. And you are right, lots of people are very unhappy with the current state of the industry and their careers.
Wages are flat or even declining, with other industries starting to catch up and surpass O&G in pay. The work is getting more and more demanding, with executives and management demanding that the operations go cheaper and faster so they can continue to pay their shareholders their dividends even with the deflated price of the commodity. I've taken a big pay cut, took a big detour in my career which I didn't want, the quality of life on location has taken a decrease for the sake of cost cuts - I can go on and on.
One of the worst parts about it is that the safety and principals of our operations have been jeopardized by all these pay cuts. The company I worked for was excellent in regards to safety and integrity, one of the best in the industry. What I've seen lately is very concerning. We now have what I call "flexible integrity", integrity only matters if it doesn't cost the company money. Standard Operating Procedures went from being considered company law to now recommendations (and only if it doesn't cost the company more time and money). What's extra frustrating is that the company and management still pretends that our value system and SOP's are important, but the untold expectation is that we do whatever we need to in order to cut costs. This means if an incident occurs and company policy/SOP is beached (which is expected of us now), I know that management isn't going to stick their neck out for their employees. The individual employee accepts all the liability, all for the sake of enriching the shareholders.
And don't even get me started on the politics and the illegal hiring and promotion practices these companies are employing for the sake of being "woke".
Yeah, the industry has certainly gone downhill.
I suspect our views differ because of where we sit and who we work/worked for, I am a pessimist but I don't think the "writing is on the walls" for O&G. To me that means something is imminent. I certainly believe this way of operating is the new norm as long as prices stay in the same general ballpark. Prices get back up closer to $75-$80/bbl and stay there for any extended period of time and I think you will see a dynamic shift in how people are managed (Rules get forgotten. Wages come up to keep people. Things get more lenient).
I personally don't think any O&G company gives two shits about climate change or wokeness. In recent memory Shell's decision to drill in the Arctic and Exxon's misreporting carbon emissions. Yes these big O&G companies want to "follow the trends" of the leaders in corporate America, like Google and Apple, but to me that is more screaming "Hey, look, we are doing something! We care!"
O&G companies don't care about talent attraction. They are hiring back people that were bad employee's before the downturn. At this point they just need warm bodies and the cheapest labor possible. They want "Yes, men" who just follow town's orders blindly, they don't want independent thinkers.
Now the real question is does the board or primary shareholders care about these sort of things? or is it all about the numbers?
The new motto for the oilfield is "Just maintain." Don't make anything any better, don't make anything any worse, just keep the course and hope everything works out, the problem will fix itself eventually.
I don't think a lot of people are afraid to make the jump, I think a lot of people don't know where they can make the same money only working 50-65% of the year. Or where they can make the same money without a college degree. I view my compensation no longer as "services rendered" but a bullshit tax for the amount of crap I have to put up with. I have a Mechanical Engineering degree, so I could do any number of things, but I am still here for one reason or another.
I have worked for the Queen for the past 2 years and they pretty much pioneered this operating precedent when O&G took the plunge. It is so bad where I work, the rig has been dubbed "Deepwater Alcatraz." When things were good 160-180 people on a drillship; we are down to about 120. I wont touch on safety or operations for obvious reasons, but I am doing the work of 2-3 people now in a 12hr shift. Yes, there is a pay increase, but hell no it is not enough.
This will be my last post on O&G so we can get back to the topic at hand of restarting your career. I don't want to derail the thread any further.
