If you fancy a holiday overseas and you’re an oil and gas sector contractor, you might just get your wish – though not in the way you might particularly expect!
While the British oil and gas industry certainly is robust, there’s only so much to go around. This means that freelance workers and umbrella company contractors Oil and gas workers within the sector may need to look a bit further afield for the next good opportunity – and their best bet may very well to venture overseas.
If you’ve tired of those cold and dreary North Sea oil rigs, you might be in luck: soon you could be headed to beastly hot and humid Mississippi, if the US Senate agrees to expand their own already highly coveted oil and gas production in the southern state.
It’s not just the US of course that has vast resources at their disposal – you really can’t swing a cat nowadays without finding a country with some interesting oil and gas rights. These sovereign nations are always on the lookout for skilled and qualified oil and gas sector workers, and in many cases you might be able to pull down a sizable compensation package by jumping ship and heading overseas.
Some see this as a threat to the UK’s own production, especially if there are more lucrative positions elsewhere. The fear is that it could lead to a mass exodus which might result in seriously scaled back North Sea oil production, and there might be more than a grain of truth in that; still, I’m sure that between the Government – who knows exactly how important British oil and gas production is – and the companies that own and operate these drilling rigs, there’s going to take the possibility very seriously and work to ensure the British sector doesn’t end up woefully understaffed.
Of course the UK could always end up outsourcing its own labour needs from foreign lands as well if it needed. This does seem a bid ludicrous, though – not to mention completely backwards. I’m sure it won’t come to that, though. Well, I certainly hope it won’t. The way the world works, it wouldn’t surprise me if it happened – though I’d be rather dismayed if that was our fate!
