shortages, a little more

Yesterday's post definitely got away from me. Yes, I wanted to discuss shortages facing the oil and gas industry, in particular the shortage of people. But I didn't really want to discuss how to solve the problem, which I of course did very poorly. I wanted to cite more examples, albeit anecdotal ones about what I see here.

In the San Juan Basin, we are short-handed. Not just Schlumberger, but everyone. Practically every rig we cover is short-handed. A standard drilling rig crew around here is a driller and four or five hands. Some of the rigs have just two hands on every shift. The rumor, which I find fairly credible, is that the standard application for working as a rig hand lists a place for the name of your parole officer. Don't worry; we don't have such a line on our application since Schlumberger requires a background check going back seven years. Though I suppose you be on parole longer than that

The curious thing is that it's not often a matter of hiring people, but one of retention. For some reason, there's an odd oilfield machismo that seems to require experienced people to treat new people like crap. I suppose it is once again a matter of communication. And money, always the money.