The Texas oil and gas industry is coming back, but many of the jobs that used to power the rigs that dot the Eagle Ford and the Permian Basin aren't coming with them, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Estimates are that as the oil companies raced to achieve efficiencies to allow Texas fracking operations to remain profitable in the new world of $55 a barrel oil, one of the key things the operators did is to replace humans with robots.
Dr. Thomas Tunstall, a UTSA economist who analyzes the Texas oil industry, recalls one trip he recently made to an oil operation in the Eagle Ford.
"When we took a rig tour, we actually got a chance to see how a person on a computer console in Oklahoma was actually managing the drilling process in South Texas," he said.
Tunstall says what is happening in oil and gas is no different than the changes that have taken place in American manufacturing, as computer proceses and automation has increasingly replaced frequently high paid human workers doing many jobs.
"In any industry where there is an opportunity to automate relatively repetitive functions," Tunstall said.
While the number of rigs in the Eagle Ford is never expected to reach the level we saw in 2013, when the price of oil was pushing $100 a barrel, while the drilling activity does increase, Tunstall predicts that we will see half or maybe fewer than half the number of jobs per rig that we saw then.
"You're still going to need guys on the rig, guiding the pipe down and supervising the operations there," he said.But increasingly, those guys on the rig are not wearing boots and work gloves working on an oil well outside Karnes City. They are in an office in San Antonio or Houston or Tulsa, where they can operate dozens of rigs remotely via connected computer systems.
Tunstall says, just like in manufacturing, there are opportunities for higher skilled workers to get the increasing number of jobs doing that on line management of oil rigs, and for veteran roughnecks to make the transition.
But he says in the 21st Century, the need for efficiency often leaves lesser skilled workers out in the cold. What we saw in manufacturing is now being seen in oil and gas.
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