The American Petroleum Institute is trying to help the oil and gas industry find workers -- by the thousands -- to fill new positions created by the shale revolution and to fill slots left empty by retirements.
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Don Harville, manager at the Reservoir Technology Center at Chesapeake Energy smells a piece of rock rich in crude oil under black light at Chesapeake's headquarters in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Crude oil , which is in the bottle in the foreground, glows yellow under black light. Rocks rich in the oil also take on a faint yellow glow and smell like motor oil. The industry needs millions of new workers, and most of them will not be as roughnecks on a rig, said the American Petroleum Institute. API has launched a jobs and training website, oilgasworkforce.com, to help the industry recruit and fill positions. WASHINGTON -- The oil and gas industry's drive for new workers is going digital.
The American Petroleum Institute today launched a job and training website to help the industry recruit enough people to fill the more than 1.3 million new positions that will be available over the next 15 years. About two-thirds of those jobs will be blue-collar professions.
The site does not yet offer job seekers the ability to search for jobs by state, but it does include jobs by by types of companies -- including drilling companies, manufacturing companies, oil companies and service and supply companies.
The site does offer a state breakout for oil and gas education programs.
For Ohio, the site lists programs now being offered at 12 community and technical colleges and universities across the state.
Those include programs at Stark State College in North Canton, Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Eastern Gateway Community College in Youngstown and degree programs at Marietta College and Youngstown State University.
Pennsylvania lists six institutions, including programs at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
"Not only are there tremendous opportunities brought about by shale development, but also the oil and gas industry is at the beginning of what insiders are calling 'the great crew change,' where a new generation of employees is needed to replace a huge retiring workforce," John Modine, API vice president of global industry services, said in a teleconference with reporters.
"The rapid expansion of energy production in our country has created hundreds of thousands of job opportunities at a level of pay significantly higher than the national average."
Quoting a 2013 U.S. Energy Information Administration analysis, Modine said the job growth in the oil and gas industry has been 40 times higher when compared to the economy as a whole.
"The bottom line is that in order to maintain America's status as a global energy leader, we will need an all-hands-on-deck approach through recruitment and retention of the next generation of oil and gas workers," he said.
The site includes four major topic breakouts: jobs, education, certification and training.
In each division, API has included dozens of websites taking the searcher to specific companies, or types of companies, and to the myriad training and certification programs.
The site is offered both in Spanish and English.