High oil prices always affect oil and gas procurement positively.
So explains Gladney Darroh, an energy search specialist with 47 years of experience who developed and coached the Winning the Offer interview methodology, which earned him the #1 ranking of technical and professional recruiter in Houston for 17 years consecutive by HAAPC.
“Projects that were not economical to do at lower prices are now quite economical to do at higher prices, and projects that were economical to do at lower prices are scaled up (which can often be done quickly) to leverage quickly a price increase.” the founding partner and president of Houston, Texas-based Piper-Morgan Associates Personnel Consultants told Rigzone.
“All of this translates into an increased need for contractors and direct hire staff,” he added.
When asked if high oil prices are affecting oil and gas hiring, Dave Mount, president of Louisiana-based OneSource Professional Search, which is celebrating 20 years of recruiting technical and financial talent in the energy industry , said higher oil and gas prices have continued the hiring momentum the company has seen from 2022 to 2023.
“Demand/recruitment for geoscientists is up in 2023 compared to 2020-2021, which is encouraging as geoscientists are typically early in an oil and gas growth cycle,” Mount said in Rigzone.
“This trend is a reversal of the sharp declines in the recruitment of this discipline before 2023 correlated with the collapse of the oil price, although the market for geoscientists is still slightly oversupplied due to the mass layoffs of recent years “, added.
“Additionally, searches for facilities engineering talent have increased slightly, indicating a higher level of investment in planned production facility projects. Demand in environmental disciplines, particularly quality of air/permitting, has also increased as the industry keeps pace with increased regulatory oversight, along with oil companies seeking to voluntarily improve their ESG commitments,” he continued.
Mount also noted that OneSource has seen a growing demand for high-end engineering technicians who can assimilate and organize diverse data from varied operational inputs and diverse technical software, “becoming a hybrid of IT and engineering.” .
Demand for other disciplines has remained steady, according to Mount.
“While demand is robust, the pace of hiring is still moderating as companies remain highly selective in hiring, not unlike the boom times of 2008, 2011, 2013 and 2014, where any candidate with a B+ rating would receive multiple offers,” Mount said.
“OneSource believes this hiring selectivity still reflects cautious hiring by operating companies balancing the tightrope of living within cash flow/capital discipline while taking on growth projects,” it added.
The price of Brent crude went from a close of $72.26 a barrel on June 27 to a close of $96.55 a barrel on September 27. It is currently trading at $87.84 a barrel.
The price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil rose from a close of $67.7 per barrel on June 27 to a close of $93.68 per barrel on September 27. At the time of writing, the commodity was trading at $86.27 per barrel.
The last time Brent closed above $96 a barrel was in November 2022, while the last time WTI closed above $93 a barrel was over a year ago.
In its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), released in September, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) projected Brent and WTI spot prices to average 84.46 $ and $79.65 per barrel, respectively, in 2023. The EIA expects the former to average $92.68 per barrel and the latter to average $87.69 per barrel in the fourth quarter of this year.
In a report sent to Rigzone on September 26, Standard Chartered projected that the price of Brent ICE would average $91 per barrel this year and that the price of NYMEX WTI oil would reach $88 per barrel. In that report, the former was expected to average $93 per barrel in the fourth quarter and the latter was expected to average $91 per barrel.
To contact the author, please send an email andreas.exarcheas@rigzone.com
