What New Oil and Gas Jobs Will Exist in the Future?

It’s hard to predict the future.

That’s what Dave Mount, the President of Louisiana based OneSource Professional Search, told Rigzone when asked what new industry jobs will exist down the line. Mount noted, however, that OneSource sees more of an evolution of jobs in the oil and gas jobs market as technology advances and is implemented into more engineering and operations spaces. 

“For instance, data analytics that have been applied already in recent shale booms into production engineering and reservoir engineering will evolve into more broad operations coverage with Artificial Intelligence (AI) taking an increasing share of both field production engineering and reservoir performance evaluation, including more real time analysis and application of the analysis vs. look backs on past performance,” Mount said. 

“We feel that plays with a large data set of wells drilled and on completion will apply AI more readily vs. newer, more geologically challenging regions,” he added.

Additionally, Mount outlined that robotics and intelligent controls will become more commonplace in all phases of the energy supply chain, projecting that robotics and sensors would be “more aggressively” deployed in more hazardous or expensive operations “making field workers more safe or automating tasks that are repetitive and can be replaced by AI”.  

“This evolution of integrating AI and robotics into operations and engineering will require workers to use their existing knowledge and skills to become more analytical to observe what actions are being performed by AI and, if necessary, using that experience to intervene as needed along with learning more robotic controls,” Mount said. 

“Some examples may include land based robots to detect hazardous chemicals/inspect potentially hazardous work areas, spills and emissions, using drones for monitoring and inspecting tanks and stack/flares, and more saturation of sensors and controls into operations involved with production operations,” he added.

When asked what new oil and gas jobs will exist in the future, Gladney B. Darroh, the founder and president of Piper-Morgan Search, highlighted “brand new jobs” and “hybrid jobs”.

“The brand new jobs will be around AI technology and will touch every single labor and process area in the development and production of hydrocarbons, both in professional and non-professional job roles,” Darroh told Rigzone.

“You’re going to find engineers and geoscientists looking and acting more like technology scientists and programmers. The newer energy jobs will also be focused in ‘everything renewable’,” he added.

“Engineering and geoscience disciplines will morph into hybrid roles that incorporate traditional job functions as we have always known them but will include much more emphasis on environmental stewardship and methods of reducing the environmental impact associated with fossil fuel production and use,” Darroh continued.

To contact the author, email andreas.exarheas@rigzone.com