Key Findings

 

Job Security

• Over half of the survey respondents have lost their jobs at least once previously to 2020, evidence that the oil and gas industry has already been systematically reducing its workforce.

• More than half of the survey respondents lost their jobs in 2020.

• Workers expressed anxiety about not being able to do anything else outside of the oil and gas industry and a preference for work that utilized existing competencies. 

 

Pay & Benefits

• Average wages in the oil and gas industry have declined. Workers complained about having been fired and then re-hired for the same work at lower pay.

• Just under a quarter of survey respondents are 1099 independent contractors. 

• Wages in emerging alternative energy industries are not competitive enough to attract oil and gas workers.

 

Safety and Working Conditions

• Just under half of survey respondents believe that their company’s safety program was explicitly or implicitly designed to shift liability of an accident onto the worker.  

• A third of survey respondents indicated that they had been ordered to engage in unsafe working practices that were in direct violation of established safety practices.

• Crew sizes are shrinking with more work expected of each worker. Smaller upstream operators appear to be under staffed intentionally to save money.

• Newer, younger hires are not being trained adequately.   

 

Future Opportunities

• Many workers expressed deep distrust of the government, but also acknowledged a potential role for certain agencies. If oil and gas companies do not rehire workers to previous levels, then many respondents said that the government should provide wage replacement (37%), health insurance benefits (35%), and fund training for workers to find new employment (42%).

• Certain geographic regions expressed a greater interest in renewable energy. For example, Gulf of Mexico regional respondents demonstrated a greater interest in offshore wind. 

• Over half of workers supported a federal jobs guarantee defined in the survey as a guaranteed public job in infrastructure repair and other public good projects with baseline benefits of health insurance, paid sick leave/vacation, and retirement.

• Just under half of workers supported direct federal employment to plug oil and gas wells. 

 

Compared to oil and gas employment data, the survey tells a story of a workforce already in transition. All segments of the oil and gas industry have learned to do more with less. Each worker’s individual productivity has skyrocketed, as more and more products are being extracted, transported, and processed with fewer and fewer workers. As the directional driller, “Archer” put it, “in the long run these crews drill themselves out of work.” Workers complained that current trends places greater pressure on remaining, smaller crews and compounds the risk each worker must face each shift. 

 

Survey responses reveal that workers know what needs to be done to improve current conditions: increase the size of crews, provide more comprehensive training to newer hires, decrease length of shifts and increase time between shifts, and improve regulatory oversight and enforcement. Workers know what will attract them to other industries: better pay, full time contracts with benefits, job security, and paid training linked to actual jobs on the other side. American oil and gas workers know that their skills are transferable, but businesses and the government have to be better at putting those skills to work. 

 

Workers also acknowledge that an energy transition, at least in part, is underway. Survey respondents expressed support of American energy security whatever form that energy takes. As one Texas upstream worker put it, “the transition away from O&G needs to be planned and managed so as to happen smoothly over the next 20 to 50 years.” Who will be in charge of that transition and where benefits will flow has yet to be determined.