The explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Mexican Gulf in April this year has inevitably taken its toll on the oil & gas sector. The resulting controversy has hit employers’ expansion plans in a sector in which critical skills shortages remain.

And the war for talent in this sector is set to intensify due to rising demand for professionals brought about by oil discoveries both in the UK and overseas.

“Bad press within the industry has had a knock-on effect on clients’ future expansion across continents,” according to Andy Preston, managing director at BW Penman. “Firms will always wonder whether it is safe to expand due to the situation in the Mexican gulf.”

A BP spokesperson told Recruiter that asset managers who oversee maintenance, making sure maintenance schedules are met and managed correctly and on time, are always in demand.

“We are determined we will always have the right professionals in place,” said the spokesperson. “Asset management and making sure things are done correctly is an integral part of our business and an essential part of our recruiting.”

A spokesperson for Chevron told Recruiter that the sector also currently lacks technical expertise in certain disciplines, for drillers, engineers and earth scientists.
According to Preston, even if employers find the right candidate, at senior level candidates are reluctant to move on. “People at senior level on more than £120k, or the equivalent of that where they are in the world, they have packages involving housing, family support and travel.

“Packages are complex - it is not as simple as comparing salary against salary. For example, it is difficult for people to move because they are reliant on pensions. The sector has an ageing workforce.”

Preston adds that the key challenge is to recruit people at a more advanced stage in their career for whom pensions are not an immediate issue.
Colin McNeil, director at technical and engineering recruiter Scantec, says this particular problem needs to be addressed by government through sponsored training or education at grass roots level to have a better demographic spread throughout the sector’s workforce.

However, McNeil adds that it is not just the employer and the benefits package that needs to be sold to candidates, but also the location.

“Countries with negative publicity and civil unrest tend to put people off from wanting to work there,” he says. “These ’hardship’ locations create problems for recruitment firms and can lead to a candidate shortage. Recruitment activity in Nigeria for ex-pats always tends to be difficult.”

Eliot Davies, director at Hays Energy, told Recruiter that there is a large requirement for exploration skills following the Encore Oil discovery in the North Sea in June.

Oil discoveries continue abroad too, however, and recruiters with international networks can steal a march on the competition. For instance, in countries like Brazil, where its government announced this month that its offshore Libra oil prospect contains roughly 8bn barrels of oil, this could mean nothing if the well of talent in this sector runs dry, says McNeil.

“The sector could lose all its talent due to [the talent] dying out,” he says. “We could reach a point in generations to come, where the talent in this sector is considerably diminished.”