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As The Oil and Gas Industry In Alberta Recovers, Lack of Labour Becomes An Issue

Oil and gas workers

Despite the fact that the price of oil has been continuously rising for several months, it has instead exposed an issue – there aren’t enough workers in Alberta’s energy sector.

When the price of oil dropped in 2014, Alberta went into recession, placing the province in a difficult financial position and causing many oil and gas workers to lose their jobs.

However, Russia’s sanctions have led to a dramatic rise in the price of oil. In addition, oil consumption has nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels after a decline at the start of the pandemic. 

Companies of all sizes, from family-owned businesses to big companies that provide services to the oil and gas industry, are having a hard time finding enough workers to keep up with demand.

According to the president and CEO of Canada’s Canadian Association of Energy Contractors, Mark Scholz, due to the recession, a lot of oil and gas workers were forced to leave the industry and their jobs.  

“The pool that we relied on have moved to other occupations — trades, construction — and have found other employment elsewhere, whether in Western Canada, or have moved back home to jurisdictions that we had traditionally recruited from, like Central Canada and Eastern Canada,” he said.

Scholz said that the labour shortage became more evident in the middle of 2021. The workforce is also looking for signs of stability, following years of low activity, before people jump back into the sector, he said.

He argued that drilling activity in the industry is at its highest level in a long, and the association predicts that the industry could operate up to 30 rigs if there were enough workers.

“If Canada is not able to recruit and be able to build the expertise needed to grow our industry, we’re not going to be able to, not only supply our domestic market with responsible energy products, but we’re also not going to be able to support the growing energy demands and energy security issues that many of our key allies are looking for,” he said.

Original source material for this article taken from here

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Written by Olivia Woods

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