Global Drive for Petroleum Pushes Tight Labor Force to the Limit
For contractors that build the facilities and infrastructure that feed the world’s voracious appetite for oil and gas, markets never have been so good, yet also so bad. It’s a market of extremes with a severe backlog of demand, yet an equally severe dearth of people to meet it. The monstrous demand for refineries, liquified-natural-gas (LNG) plants, pipelines and underwater facilities is prompting dozens of multibillion-dollar projects to proliferate around the world, but also causing many contractors to feel the monster’s bite as shrinking pools of labor and materials present project pitfalls.
Globally, demand for oil has continued to ratchet up steadily around the world as India and many Asian nations continue to develop western-style thirsts for energy. In North America, contractors that rely on upstream Gulf of Mexico-based work have seen that market remain flat in the past year as investments are being steered downstream, while oil producers increasingly look to heavy crude from Canada’s oil sands to meet careening demand in the U.S.