The Biggest Threat To Oil & Gas Jobs

[Pavel + 384]

If the pandemic did damage to oil jobs, watch what happens when roughnecks are replaced with robots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk__1Se5ybE

 

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

The following two statements describe exactly the same phenomenon:

• Automation increases productivity, allowing lower prices and higher salaries.
• Automation kill jobs by reducing the number of workers needed to produce the same output.

In the case of the shale revolution, lower oil prices required the companies to dramatically reduce the number of workers needed per barrel of oil produced, and thus bring down the cost. If this automation had not occurred, The companies would have gone out of business and there would be no jobs. A cruel choice: lose your job to automation, or lose your job when the company fails.

The logical end game: all jobs that can be automated, will be automated, and a social system based on humans working for a living will cease to make sense. This process started with the industrial revolution and is currently accelerating as AI makes it possible to automate just about all jobs. No, I don't have a solution.

[markslawson + 1,042]

On 4/16/2021 at 2:31 AM, Pavel said:

If the pandemic did damage to oil jobs, watch what happens when roughnecks are replaced with robots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk__1Se5ybE

Sure more oil and gas jobs could be automated. This is an ongoing process. I haven't looked closely at employment trends in the sector over time but I'm pretty sure you'll find that the number of jobs required to produce each million barrels of oil is far less than the number required even 20 years ago.. I know in coal mining at any given time there are perhaps 3-4 people actually underground in the mind tending the giant machines now used to excavate the coal, as opposed to the hundreds digging the ore out by hand required before WWII. There is nothing to suggest that any coming developments will dramatically change that trend. Instead what you will get is changes in demand and the markets causing workers to be laid off or rehired..