California Oil Industry Looks to Replenish Ranks
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
The Bakersfield Californian
by John Cox
The upturn in oil prices has worsened a shortage of experienced engineers and other science professionals ready to work in Kern's suddenly bustling petroleum industry.
People in the industry say large local producers are scrambling to recruit and train young people to replace engineers and geologists nearing retirement age.
The effort is hampered by the industry's notoriously unsteady employment pattern: Many young oil engineers were let go about a decade ago when crude prices languished and drilling work tapered off. Many entered different fields and never looked back.
Local factors have made the situation particularly acute. Cal State Bakersfield has an industry-oriented geology department, but the university produces no engineers. Also, attracting fresh graduates from outside the area can be difficult because of Bakersfield's reputation as a sleepy ag town.
"I'd like to hire an engineer myself and I don't really know where to look," Bakersfield oil producer Chad Hathaway said, adding that he'd be in high demand now if he had stayed in engineering school.
The severity of the shortage tracks closely with gasoline prices, said Jackie Flesher, co-owner of ProSearch Associates, an executive technical recruitment service in Bakersfield. Two years ago, she said, nobody needed an oil engineer; now she has 25 such positions to fill.
"It's very cyclical," she said. "They do get laid off and they do get hired back."
One of the largest producers operating locally, Occidental Petroleum Corp., is looking to fill more than 50 positions in Bakersfield ranging from engineering to safety jobs. It hasn't been easy.
"We acknowledge there is a shortage of qualified technical professionals available to work within the oil and gas industry," Oxy spokeswoman Susie Geiger wrote in an email. "In light of that, we want to bring our new employees up to speed faster than before." To that end, she wrote, the company is developing a two- to five-year program intended to accelerate new employee training.
That's a key challenge facing not only oil producers but utilities and others in the local energy industry, said Robin Fleming, senior manager of business development at the Kern Economic Development Corp., which helps grow and retain local businesses. She said all the large producers operating here are investing in recruitment and building up work experience.
"There is a ramp-up to try and get those people in for training," she said.
Some of that is happening at a very early stage. A local initiative headed by KEDC's nonprofit foundation promotes energy professions among high school girls who have expressed an interest in math, science and engineering. Called the Alliance for Women in Energy, it arranges for local energy professionals to mentor these students and show them the benefits of working in oil, wind energy and utilities.
While these students could go on to pre-engineering programs at Bakersfield College and CSUB, there is no way for them to earn an oil engineering degree in Kern County -- yet.
Last fall CSUB won a $3.7 million U.S. Department of Education grant for the creation of a computer engineering degree that university spokesman Robert Meszaros said will serve as a stepping stone for future engineering programs.
Such graduate engineering programs do not exist locally partly because of a lack of money but also because of engineering programs at Fresno State and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Meszaros said.
But CSUB does offer undergraduate and post-graduate geology degrees -- and the local oil industry makes good use of them.
"We get inquiries weekly from people who have jobs they're looking to fill," said Robert Horton, chairman of CSUB's department of geological sciences. He added that most of the inquiries come from the oil industry.
Something that makes the program of particular value to the local industry, Horton said, is the fact that the graduates are accustomed to the Kern County lifestyle. He said that's important to Bakersfield-area employers, who otherwise must convince job candidates of the high quality of life here.
But perhaps the bigger challenge goes back to the cyclical nature of the industry. Times may be good now, but projects will eventually dry up if prices hit the dirt again, as happened in the late 1990s.
Les Clark, executive vice president of Bakersfield's Independent Oil Producers Agency, said the industry lost a lot of good people back then.
"Right now I think the oil industry is a good place to go get yourself a job," he said. "It's the ups and downs that really get us."
