While the recovery may be slower than anticipated by some offshore leaders, it is happening, and 2011 has the makings of a decent year, according to a survey by Maxwell Drummond International.
More than 40% said it would take another full year, while 15% thought business was already back to normal.
In the meantime, 2010 will be a year in two halves, with the pick-up beginning for many firms during H2.
However, while confidence is returning and the sector did not panic and make wholesale lay-offs, as happened with the mid-1980s oil-price crash and late-1990s downturn, there are still significant job issues.
Especially for subsea, all respondents predicted that 2011 would be the bounce-back year, and it has emerged that “they’re as busy hiring for key positions as they ever have been”, according to MDI UK general manager Sean Buchan.
He notes, in particular, that drilling, subsea, extended oil recovery and reservoir engineering are categories where there is the greatest “clamour for talent”.
Basically, there are functional gaps across the board. This is particularly true in areas where energy is the hardest to recover. But even with basics such as operations, there is widespread concern that there aren’t enough skilled people to cope with the workload.
That worry appears to have persuaded a significant proportion of respondents to at least capitalise on the wider economic downturn to pull in fresh blood, even if they had shunted the sale of non-core assets or making acquisitions to one side for the time being.
In other words, investing in people is relatively high on the agenda for many firms.
“A lot of respondents have been able to add staff … upgrade on the personnel side,” Buchan told Energy.
“The hunt for talent is still on, and that’s a great sign.”
He said this was particularly marked where companies were starting to become involved in “unconventionals” such as shale gas, and where the focus appeared to be on building leadership teams.
In that regard also, respondents predict that North America will continue to dominate the unconventional resources market, but Eastern Europe (Romania and Poland, for example) will figure heavily in the next wave of unconventional resources.
Companies are also eyeing the graduates market. As opposed to a year ago, respondents believe current students and recent graduates should consider careers in the energy sector.
This may be a reflection of the need for more intellectual capital as well as further evidence of an impending recovery, therefore a need to fill positions.
There is awareness that the energy mix is beginning to shift, but responders predict it will be at least 15 years before alternative energy and nuclear sources really kick in. Meanwhile, petroleum remains king.
From a geographic perspective, the survey revealed that most companies see West Africa as the leading region for deploying production resources in the foreseeable future. Offshore North America and the Middle East were tied in the survey as the second most important areas for near-term production opportunities.
Respondents continue to believe that the US dollar will be the dominant currency in the industry for the next 10 years.
There were 100 participants in the survey. All were at vice-president level or higher.
Nearly two-thirds of the companies surveyed have international operations and the majority of headquarters were located in the US, followed by Europe, although companies in Asia-Pacific and Africa were included in the sample.
The surveyed companies’ revenues ranged from less than $500million to more than $10billion annually.