U.K.: Too Few Qualified Oil & Gas Workers, Survey Reveals

The U.K. Government needs to aid in the recruitment of North Sea oil and gas workers, an industry recruiter has said. This measure, according to the recruiter, would quell massive wage increases in the face of a shortfall of qualified staff.

In a survey of more than 900 oil and gas companies, recruiter oilandgaspeople.com found that the lack of skilled workers in the area was driving industry pay up. In the last year, another survey by the agency found, 61% of 5,000 workers in the North Sea area of the U.K. had received a pay rise in the past year. The average wage of an oil and gas worker could rise by 15 per cent in this year, an analysis of the company survey found, bringing annual salaries from £64,000 to £73,000.

A shortfall in the amount of workers currently qualified to work in the U.K. is leading the spiralling wage costs, oilandgaspeople said. The reasons oil and gas company respondents gave for this shortfall varied. The majority, 44 per cent, said that a growing demand for U.K. staff from other companies was drawing qualified people out of the country; 32% said that too little investments in apprenticeships had been made due to an assumption that North Sea oil was in decline; 11% said that recent growth and investment in the country was unexpected, due to an expectation that new technology to pump low-grade oil would not be successful.

While the reasons given for the fall in skilled employees differed between employers, the results of the survey coalesce with those of another study conducted by Lloyds Banking Group earlier this month. Though Lloyds identified the possibility of 32,000 new jobs in Scotland alone in the next two years, due to developments in the oil and gas industry, it found that a third of the 100 companies it surveyed were worried that they would not find enough skilled workers to fill the roles.

CEO of oilandgaspeople.com Kevin Forbes urged the government to get involved.

"With the record investment in North Sea Oil in the last few months, this pressure on wages and skilled staff does not look likely to end any time soon," he said. "But there is a solution. The Government needs to step in and incentivise companies to invest more in people urgently.

"So many people want to get into the industry but there is very little out there in the way of guidance in how to go about that. A lot more needs to be done and now is the time for the industry and government to take action."