Christmas 2012 - Peace, Love, Joy, Hope

Energy Industry Hiring Vets

I read an article about vets suffering a 75% unemployment rate with sadness…but there is hope below. 

Need a job? Halliburton (HAL: NYSE) is hiring. In fact, Halliburton plans to hire more than 11,000 employees this year, according to recent news reports. Most of the new hires will go to North Dakota and Montana to work on the Bakken oil play.

The Bakken is among the hottest of hot spots in the oil patch just now, producing over 400,000 barrels of oil per day. The secret to success is directional drilling within the oil-bearing formations, coupled with hydraulic fracturing (fracking) that breaks up the underground rock formation to release the entrapped oil. One leading operator in the Bakken is Hess Oil Co. (HES: NYSE), by the way.

As for Halliburton, it's hiring people with skills ranging from engineers to trade workers to MBAs. It's even hiring unskilled laborers, with the intention of training the nuggets to work in the oil patch. According to a Halliburton manager, "If you have a willingness to work and an aptitude to learn with a high school education, within a year and a half to two years, you can become a frontline supervisor. That job will pay $125,000-130,000 a year."

All kidding aside, the high pay scales are justified because Halliburton has such a large backlog of business. Since last April, for example, Halliburton has been running its fracking crews around the clock in the Bakken region. Demand for oil field services has simply outpaced the supply of people and equipment. 

According to the Oil & Gas Journal, many fracking companies (Halliburton and others) are warning of a six-month wait to get fracking crews on site to complete a well. Whatever the stock market does, the oil service business is booming.

Hiring Veterans

In a development that hits a personal nerve, the energy industry is making an aggressive effort to hire military veterans, from both active duty and the reserve components. It makes eminent sense, in that there's a need in the energy industry for a qualified, safety-minded and dedicated workforce.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) developed a program to reach out to prior-service and retiring military people, and those in the reserves, called Veterans to Energy.

In the past, I've discussed how the growing global demand for oil and gas puts the energy industry in a labor predicament. That is, the workforce is getting older, and there's a missing cadre of people from the bust of the 1980s and 1990s who were never hired or were otherwise laid off. So energy companies must act now to fill their vacancies. They need to retain the knowledge and skills of a "graying" workforce while bringing in new blood to get the work done.

There are many aspects of military service that transfer to the oil and gas biz, such as exploration, production, refining, transport and marketing. This applies especially to technical skills, such as mechanical and electrical work, as well as logistics, warehouse and inventory work. Then there are the nontechnical aspects, such as leadership, teamwork and the drive to achieve results -- often as not outdoors, under harsh environmental conditions. The jobs are there.

Thanks for reading. Have a good week. Best wishes...

Byron W. King

Web 2.0 Social Media Customer Contact Strategy

This is a social media PowerPoint presentation I created to help small businesses understand the power of social media to  convert customers to relationships and sales. For example, my sister Sue has a window fashion and treatments business and she found it useful. Hope you do, too.

Click any screen to enlarge it.

Trinitarians

My son Eamon was asked to play violin for a Trinitarian brother, James Mark Adame, O.SS.T., who was taking his vows at the Baltimore Trinitarian Monastary, on November 10, 2012.
As his father, I was blessed to participate in the Eucharistic Liturgy with the priests and brothers of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity, Province of the Immaculate Heart of Mary with him. It's rare that you see so many priests, brothers, and nuns gathered in one place, and I have to say it created an atmosphere of holiness, rare in this world.

The reading that day was the Gospel reading was John 14:23-29 "Anyone who loves me will be true to my word, and my Father will love him; we will come to him and make our dwelling place with him always..." He who does not love me does not keep my words. Yet the word you hear is not mine; it comes from the Father who sent me.
This much have I told you while I was still with you; the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will instruct you in everything, and remind you of all that I told you. "Peace" is my farewell to you, my peace is my gift to you; I do not give it to you as the world gives peace.
Do not be distressed or fearful. You have heard me say, "I go away for a while, and I come back to you." If you truly loved me you would rejoice to have me go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.

I tell you this now, before it takes place, so that when it takes place you may believe." 

Among the amazing facts about the Trinitarians is that for 800 years they have bought back Christian slaves from the Muslims...even now. 

At the bottom of this post is a framed scroll that hangs in their dining room. 

It records the purchase of hundreds of Christian slaves from the Muslims for gold in Algiers in 1721. 

The manifest for their purchase back is at the bottom of this post. The top lists the priests and other religious, the remainder are children. 

They have a rule of "the Tertia pars" that one third of all income be set aside for the ransom of Christian captives. 

Yes, sadly in 2012 they are still ransoming Christian "captives" (slaves) from the Muslims.