Experienced Workers Hard to Find as the Oil Patch Booms
by Vicki Vaughan
San Antonio Express-News 3/9/2006
URL: rigzone.com
South Texas exploration companies are thrilled with surging demand for oil and gas, and contract drilling companies have watched excitedly as prices for their services zoom upward.
But things aren't perfect in the oil patch. There's a shortage of qualified field workers, and those hired are too often wooed away.
"The labor market is extremely tight for all energy personnel. It is extremely challenging," said Stacy Locke, CEO of Pioneer Drilling, a San Antonio-based contract land drilling company.
Will Wallace, operations vice president at Abraxas Petroleum in San Antonio, agreed. "It's very competitive. The biggest problem we're seeing today is that companies are having to consider hiring workers with less experience," he said.
The problem is rooted in the cyclical nature of the oil and gas business. When oil prices collapsed in the mid-1980s, many workers left the field, never to return. And the backbreaking and dangerous work on an oil rig requires that most workers have years of experience.
"You can't just hire a truck driver and make him a tool pusher," Pioneer's Locke said.
A tool pusher, the top hand on a drilling rig who supervises the crew, is the worker most in demand. In the past, it could take a rig worker 10 years to rise to the tool pusher's job. Working up from floor hand to derrickman to driller could take five years. .
Today, the route to the top job on a rig doesn't take as long, yet the tool pusher has more responsibilities.
"Today, a tool pusher may have two to three crews to supervise," Wallace said. "He may have 15 guys working for him and he may supervise three drillers." The work is grueling. Rig workers usually work 12-hour shifts for seven days straight, then have seven days off. The work goes on 24 hours a day through bone-chilling Texas northers and 102-degree summer days.
But for skilled workers there are tremendous opportunities. Locke, of Pioneer Drilling, said salaries of top hands are a closely guarded secret. But Wallace guessed that a tool pusher supervising several rigs could take home $100,000 a year.
"The challenge today is keeping your tool pushers," Locke said, "because your customer becomes your worst enemy," hiring away top hands. If Pioneer is providing five rigs to a client and the customer decides to double that number, the client will need a "company man," a supervisor on site to protect its interests.
Those clients most often hire a tool pusher from its drilling company as the company man.
A company may find some relief from the tight labor situation if it's exploring in an isolated area. San Antonio-based Exploration Co. hasn't had to fight to keep employees on board, perhaps because "we're in an area that has fairly limited employment opportunities," spokesman Paul Hart said. The company drills for oil and gas in the Maverick Basin near Eagle Pass in southwest Texas.
But all too often regional drilling companies are competing for workers with some of the nation's biggest drillers, including Grey Wolf Inc., which has 1,370 working rigs in the United States, and Patterson-UTI Energy based in Snyder, with 403 rigs.
Officials with Grey Wolf and Patterson-UTI did not return calls seeking comment.
But Pioneer's Locke said today's tight labor market is something that the energy industry has had to learn to live with.
"It's no different than any other prior cycle like this," Locke said, when demand for oil and gas and for oil field services has been high.
Copyright (c) 2006, San Antonio Express-News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. |
