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
Byron W. King
