Two years ago a large number of Sr petro-techs with 25 plus years experience took the package, essentially completing the “great crew change” caused by the baby boomer demographic bulge and the lack of new hires during the 1980-1990 oil price downturn. The exodus did not matter much recently as exploration and new production stalled and management became infatuated with the digital transformation. As the price of oil ramps up again do we now have the right workforce to find, characterize, and develop new reservoirs?
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Just beg the boomers back and this company will take off full throttle to success! BO-M-ers!!!! Don’t leave it to these young f@@ls who are too busy trying to figure out what pronoun to use on their email!!
No question that at every decision gate some answers will be put on the table (they always are). The problem becomes having no one around to recognized when an answer are good enough vs when they need to be returned to the mixing bowl (hint: assest management will have no clue and external consultants generally specialize in pushing hot air up managements a$$).
Chevron has enough existing (Boomer) assets to stumble and flail through the next few years and characterize it as 'success due to diversity'. In about five years, when Permian won't be 'easy' anymore, the lack of talent (technical AND managerial) will really start to show.
No because when times are tough we sell everything at rock bottom prices and cut staff, and when times are good we overpay for acquisitions to catch up
Bad managers assume all employees of a given specify are interchangeable, whereas the good managers know to seek out those with the right types of experience or at least get peer reviews before basing decisions on the work of junior staff.
If the younger lot are really smart, they would run not walk away from the oil “bid ness”
Petrotech is not rocket science. A lot of the young kids are smarter than than the boomers and quick on their feet. They will be fine.
We can argue the logarithmic relationship between cow manure and methane gas but what we can’t do is get the cows to admit it.
It doesn’t matter MW has set the course and this ship will sail it.
"... do we now have the right workforce to find, characterize, and develop new reservoirs?"
OP, the quick answer to your question is, "no". Those are skills honed through training, mentorship, and experience. Chevron bungled the first two with weak to non-existent programs, and experience cannot be 'fast-tracked', particularly in the absence of the other two factors (ask any Permian petrotech). Chevron wasted the 'great crew change', worrying far more about MARC, ALLY, D&I, the dividend, cow manure, etc. rather than shaping their subsurface professionals. Experienced Boomers were under fire to retire or be fired from 2015 onward, few if any had any encouragement to train their successors, so no 'succession planning' took place, even at the managerial level. Microsoft, Schlumberger, and MIT combined to convince a bunch of dewey-eyed high-pots and clueless returning expats that digital was the solution to everything, and that the computer would replace the subsurface professional (I heard that in a presentation). Needless to say, that hasn't happened.
As for CTC , they're basically a group of overpriced yet inexperienced (thus clueless) PhDs. None are held in any regard outside of the CTC org chart.
Honestly now days it doesn't matter if its bo-m or bust times the average employees aren't going to get ahead here. Unless you have a lot of stock and get the ever increasing dividend then you won't move up or get anything extra.
Don’t worry we have the DSC and CTC they know everything ....