The evolution of the energy industry has created a host of new jobs that require a lot of training and skills but are highly remunerative.
That’s according to the Permian Basin Petroleum and Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners associations, who say the industry is hardly recognizable from 40-50 years ago except inasmuch as it still produces oil and natural gas.
PBPA President Ben Shepperd says technological innovation has impacted aspects of every job.
“So while there is still a high need for physical labor that labor has evolved or has been supplemented by hardware and software improvements and breakthroughs,” Shepperd said. “Computer engineers, programmers and technicians are just some of the careers that were not part of your grandfather’s oilfield.
“Even the education needed for traditional career fields like petroleum engineering has evolved as computers and other equipment has developed to facilitate a more efficient and effective oilfield. Over the last few years there has also been an incredible increase in jobs that are specifically associated with air and emissions monitoring.”
Shepperd said the industry offers a variety of jobs that require various training and education.
“Fortunately our local academic institutions have worked hard to adjust the programs they offer whether they are training programs, associates’ degrees, bachelors’ degrees or advanced degrees in nearly every field in which the industry is looking for workers,” he said. “With over 100 years of production as proof, as technology evolves the jobs needed to continue producing the natural resources of the Permian Basin will evolve as well.”
TIPRO President Ed Longanecker said the oil and natural gas industry is one of the most innovative sectors in the world and jobs have evolved with new technologies being utilized.
“Automation technologies is a key area of growth from an employment standpoint that will drive operational efficiencies, safety and profitability,” Longanecker said from Austin. “These applications and related technical positions will become more prevalent, supporting advancements in autonomous drilling operations, training, forecasting and much more.
“Some of the top technical postings in the Texas upstream sector last month by title included technical professionals, leak detection and repair technicians, automation engineers, engineering managers, automation specialists, software engineers and application engineers. These positions also demand healthy compensation with a median advertised salary of $76,500 and 27 percent of advertised salaries being in the $115,000 to $163,000 range.”
Longanecker said another area of innovation is advanced water management.
“Operators in the Permian Basin are using new technologies as well as improving existing ones to make water recycling and re-use more common and cost effective,” he said. “For example innovation in water management practices and fracking fluid chemistry has allowed Texas operators to re-use millions of gallons of produced water, even those with very high salinity up to 220,000 milligrams per liter of total dissolved liquids for fracking operations.”
Dating back at least to the 1980s, he said, the oil and natural gas sector has turned to supercomputers to crunch vast amounts of data.
“More recently major producers have unveiled some of the fastest supercomputers on earth such as British Petroleum’s Center for High-Performance Computing in Houston or Eni’s HPC4 supercomputer in Milan, Italy, which can process 100,000 reservoir models in just over 15 hours,” he said.
“From ‘smart PIGs’ (to inspect the insides of pipelines) and robotic tank inspectors to gas cloud imaging, drones, machine learning and real-time communication across equipment through the Internet of Things, oil and gas companies are more advanced than some would think. Using these technologies operators are able to increase production efficiency, reduce emissions, improve safety and more accurately determine where resources are located.”
