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I have not posted here in awhile, but I have lived out here for over 9 years now, all of which I have been employed by the same operator. I moved here from Houston, where I began my career on offshore rig rotations. I have seen the ups and down of the bakken formation. Honestly it has never been especially difficult to secure employment in oil and gas out here regardless of the price of oil or what has been going on politically. If you are sane and sober you can generally land yourself a job.
That being said, we are seeing developments now that are starting to remind me of the initial craze of the oil boom out here. People are getting hired on the spot to literally start work that same day, and offers are even being extended to people out of state which almost never happens. Wages are also much higher than is typical. I fully expect that over the next month or so when weather starts to take a positive turn that the frenzy will grow even larger. My own employer is offering a 3K bonus to any person I can bring onboard who stays at the position for more than 90 days, and 5K if they stay for 1 year.
Oil and gas employees like myself are always going to be a political football. The rest of the world pretends to hate us until they need us, and right now they need us more than ever. I also know for a fact that the current administration has invited many of the suits from both here and Houston to DC to discuss the potential for increasing production. While this is certainly possible, we are going to need a rather large influx of both manpower and capital investment to pull it off.
For those of you looking for work, there is plentiful work to be had across the spectrum right now.
If we sanction Russia, I guess we really need to drill more in Bakken.
If we get into another war we will have to un-sanction Venezuela, and Iran.
Of course we should be drilling more in the Bakken and everywhere else. All Biden needs to do is scrap his stupid "Build Back Better" plan and reinstitute "Put It Back to Where You Found It". The world is still going to need oil and gas so why are we begging tyrants to furnish it when we are capable, especially at the price it is. It doesn't harm the environment any more if we are providing it. If doing so drops the price back down below $ 100 a barrel it's STILL big money for our country, our companies, and our workers and their families. Why benefit our enemies that hate us? That's idiocy.
It's just common sense to go back to where we were just a little over a year ago. Then we can REALLY put the squeeze on Putin.
Between us and the vast fields in Texas, we could easily provide ample capacity to supply the US market and still have considerable surplus to offer assistance to our European allies. Bear in mind we only have 15 rigs operational at the Bakken as of this morning, and at our peak we were over 50.
Though what many people outside of this industry fail to understand is that it takes 3 facets of the game working in unison to provide you with fuel when you stop at the gas station or to cause the furnace to light when you flip the thermostat. Namely, upstream, midstream, and downstream. Upstream is your exploration and production (E&P) companies, who find reservoirs and drill oil and gas wells. Midstream companies are responsible for transportation from the wells to refineries and downstream companies are responsible for refining and the sale of the finished products. These are often entirely independent entities and not all of them play nicely with one another any given quarter. More importantly, all of them are often beholden to the feds in terms of their political, capital, and regulatory limitations. For example, in my own slice of the game, many smaller operators are being forced out because they can no longer secure financing.
So in a perfect world if you could remove all of the political and bureaucratic red tape and get DC to suspend all of it's current posturing, you would have all of the oil and gas you need in a relatively short time span. The problem is that just asking the suits in Houston to up production is not going to cut it. They are going to want assurances that DC is not going to suddenly change its mind 18 months from now and go back to the same old "oil is Satan" routine. If they are going to be sinking billions of dollars into developing more supply and bringing it to market, then the share holders are going to want to be damn sure they can recoup those costs. Still, I think the US based oil and gas sector is a much more reasonable place to start than going to some 3rd world dictator and asking them for increased production, but that's just me.
Unfortunately, if I was a betting man, I would wager that there will not be any significant changes to US oil and gas production in the foreseeable future. You will see incremental increases no question, but nothing of the order of magnitude that would be required to offset a market like this. If that's a sour grapes reality for some people then I apologize, and I certainly hope I am wrong, but I have been doing this a long time and I know all too well how the game is played with the Feds.
Oil price is also driven far too much by market speculation and commodities (derivatives) trading. Earlier this week it briefly touched $130 and now it is already back to $105. It could easily be back to $80 next week as no one can predict the future accurately.
Sure, granted that oil is not dissimilar in many respects to any other form of commodity trading like a farmers corn or a miners gold in that the companies themselves do not stipulate prices. This is buying, selling, speculating by wall street types, etc.
However, the immutable fact that overrides everything is the rather simple premise of supply and demand. Everything else is secondary to this principle. Be it oil and gas or fried chicken. This will dictate price more over the long term than any hedge fund manager or politician running their mouth ever could.
As stated, I am not optimistic much of anything significant will come from the bloviating in DC. It would require them to essentially commit political suicide with their base by taking the necessary measures for domestic oil and gas to dramatically increase production. Though I am not sure how much appetite the American public is going to have for higher prices on an elongated timeline. If people are paying North of 5 bucks a gallon months from now all bets are off. Politically, the midterms would be utter annihilation for the Democratic Party and then it would be the Republicans in congress trying to cozy up to Houston with Biden stonewalling them until 2024. Nothing meaningful would get accomplished, and round and round the merry go round spins.
I almost wish this crisis would have come to pass in October at the beginning of Winter as opposed to now at the onset of Spring. The very real potential of millions of people freezing to death in Europe and elsewhere could have provided the necessary sense of urgency for people to drop the political crap and be more pragmatic.
Last edited by ChiTownRobby; 03-10-2022 at 03:43 PM..
…If you are sane and sober you can generally land yourself a job.
Ha, good luck with that. You will be going through a lot of applicants in the oil industry. I worked on a crew as a welders helper out of Taft in my college years, 90% of the crew were either drug users or alcoholics or, most of the time, both..on the job! Dangerous!!! The rest were bitter, angry, Jesus freaks. Thank god the lease owners, Husky, Chevron, Shell, ect, started requiring mandatory random drug and alcohol testing on anyone working on their leases…ESPECIALLY CONTRACTORS. After that, things were much safer, professional and drama free.
Ha, good luck with that. You will be going through a lot of applicants in the oil industry. I worked on a crew as a welders helper out of Taft in my college years, 90% of the crew were either drug users or alcoholics or, most of the time, both..on the job! Dangerous!!! The rest were bitter, angry, Jesus freaks. Thank god the lease owners, Husky, Chevron, Shell, ect, started requiring mandatory random drug and alcohol testing on anyone working on their leases…ESPECIALLY CONTRACTORS. After that, things were much safer, professional and drama free.
Oh yeah, I have worked with the occasional **** bird in my career. Such is the nature of a job with a very low barrier of entry starting out. More so back in the day in Houston than out here, but back then? OMG, as soon as we would rotate back to shore it was total drunken debauchery with a lot of those guys. All the money they made was either booze, dope or left in a strippers G-string. I could tell you stories for days on that front.
Out here the bigger problem I often see is a total and complete lack of financial literacy. You got some young guy that formerly the largest check they ever cashed said Kentucky Fried Chicken on it. Now all of the sudden they are pulling in some pretty decent bank. So they buy some huge super duty with a ridiculous car payment or get themselves into other financial problems with their spending. They wind up with ruined credit in short order and work themselves to death trying to pay for it.
Oh yeah, I have worked with the occasional **** bird in my career. Such is the nature of a job with a very low barrier of entry starting out. More so back in the day in Houston than out here, but back then? OMG, as soon as we would rotate back to shore it was total drunken debauchery with a lot of those guys. All the money they made was either booze, dope or left in a strippers G-string. I could tell you stories for days on that front.
Oh yea, i was there too. Like they pull off the crew van mirror and do lines of coke at 7 in the morning on the way to the job site. Have rock fights with the other crews during lunch, and the crew boss is participating. On the way back to the yard, buying an 18 pack of beer and a Hustler magazines, smoke some weed and finish the beer before you get back to the yard. In a fully loaded crew van. These guys were strait out of high school making $50k in the 80’s.
Out here the bigger problem I often see is a total and complete lack of financial literacy. You got some young guy that formerly the largest check they ever cashed said Kentucky Fried Chicken on it. Now all of the sudden they are pulling in some pretty decent bank. So they buy some huge super duty with a ridiculous car payment or get themselves into other financial problems with their spending. They wind up with ruined credit in short order and work themselves to death trying to pay for it.[/quote]
My cousin that worked the rigs as a welder in the Northwest Territories of Canada said they would work a 6 month contract and a lot of the guys would be flat broke gambling and whoring it all away. Stupid.
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