Oil Companies Vie to Plug Skills Gap That Threatens Supply

Falling raw material and equipment costs in a slowing world economy offer an opportunity for oil and gas companies to solve the problems of rising costs and delays at major projects, but the industry again finds itself confronting a longstanding enemy - a shortage of people with the skills and experience to lead these developments.

If efforts to plug the skills gap don't succeed, senior industry executives say oil companies' ability to tap new and challenging hydrocarbon resources fast enough to meet demand may have already have reached its limit.

"The really big strategic issue for all oil and gas companies is matching the earth's resource endowment with the capability - technology, skills and know-how - required to bring those resources to market," said BP PLC's head of exploration and production Andy Inglis in a speech at Rice University in Texas last week. Because of the skills shortage, this capability already may have peaked, he said.

Rapid inflation in the cost of doing business, from renting drilling rigs to the cost of steel pipes, has been a growing impediment to companies racing to bring new oil and gas resources to market. It has become increasingly common for major projects to blow out their budgets and come online months or years late.

"At the moment, costs are at an all-time high," said Candida Scott, senior director of cost and technology at U.S.-based consultancy Cambridge Energy Research Associates, or CERA. But she said there are signs that they could begin to fall again. The price of many of the basic raw materials used in energy projects - steel or bitumen, for example - is falling and the availability of vital equipment such as drilling rigs or floating oil-production vessels has grown, she said.

I refuse to accept this. We are going to win and VP Sarah is going to light a fire under America.

We have FOUR times the Saudis oil reserves in shale oil, coal diesel and ND on land in the lower 48 at $30 a barrel.

This will create thousands of jobs, immense wealth, $750 billion that stays in America, tax revenues, and many other benfits for Americans and will lower manufacturers costs. This is energy for America for the next 150 + years.

The energy creates good jobs that can go to service people coming back from Iraq and then Afghanistan.

Our energy independence will solve the IslamoFacism problem. Sarah understands this and we will fight for it with our new VP.

I wish that we could convince the rats. They have no intention to allow any additional meaningful domestic energy exploration. If the rats do not kill the energy exploration directly, they will let their green allies do the dirty work. Every new proposed area of energy exploration is under attack. Every proposed refinery is under attack. Every proposed coal plant is under attack. Every proposed nuclear power plant is under attack. An energy meltdown is coming sooner rather later. Even if McCain is elected, I do not think that McCain can accomplish much with the rats in charge of Congress.

Weak and subversive science curricula

is the reason we have resource extraction and hi-tech energy skill shortages.

In my experience many textbooks are filled with junk science and contribute to the weak curricula. Any topic revolving around energy or the environment will generally portray humans as the killers of cuddly polar bears or some other doom and gloom. It is rare it find the awesome achievements of the 20th century: peaceful nuclear fission, automobiles, and other technological advances presented without cautionary caveats and apologies. Why would a 4th grader wish to pursue the hard sciences that manipulate natural resources if mankind is always held up as the despoiler of nature? The clamor to retreat from the benefits of the Industrial Revolution by those who consider a gas (CO2) constituting 0.038 percent of our atmosphere to be a terrible calamity in the making is another indication of the anti-science that often impacts education curricula decisions.
Why teach science if it going to be ignored in the debate surrounding the global warming superstition?
Green movement using school children as puppets, Wall Street Journal, 29Sep07. Children are being indoctrinated and used as pawns by those promoting anti-science and anti-human ideologies.
Reality Deniers, 15Jan08, by Roy Spencer, principal research scientist at the Global Hydrology and Climate Center of the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Ala.
EXCERPT:
"Unfortunately, it seems that public opinion is leaning more toward feel-good efforts than toward real solutions. This can be partly blamed on our education system. Math teachers that place more emphasis on how a student feels about a problem than the correct answer, or a biology teacher ranting about the mythical extinction of polar bears, are not conducive to maintaining an informed public.
"The entertainment industry is equally to blame. While movie stars are sexy, equations are not so much. Movie producers and writers tug on our heart strings with stories centered on modern technological problems, but their solution to those problems always ends up with a touchy-feely vindication of the environmentally-concerned citizen over the evil corporate polluters. Those of us old enough to remember the 1979 movie “The China Syndrome” know that it had a profound effect on our views of the safety of nuclear power.
"But touchy-feely people need energy, too, and I can guarantee you that the solution to any energy problem won’t be in the touchy-feely realm. It will involve real chemistry, real physics, real engineering, real math, and real science."
Spencer's climate science testimony before Congress on 22Jul08.

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