With the Government opening the 28th licensing round, the oil and gas sector is set to explode with activity – and that spells good news for contract workers.
Freelancers and umbrella company contractors are sure to benefit from the Government giving oil and gas companies leave to apply for new licenses for offshore drilling. There’s already some 350,000 jobs being supported by the sector in the UK – which generates some £14 billion a year in capital expenditures – and a good number of those jobs are contract positions already.
Honestly it’s nothing to shake a stick at in my opinion, considering the UK can use domestic energy sources to comprise about half of its consumption. The next licensing round could possibly expand this even further in addition to providing more opportunities for oil and gas contractors to pick up additional work.
And it’s not just contract workers that know how to extract that precious oil from the seabed that can benefit either. The erection of new offshore platforms will require infrastructure experts from the construction fields, and then above and beyond the maintenance needs of these new platforms you’ve got all the job opportunities that spring up around them down the pipeline so to speak. There’s most definitely a knock-on effect when it comes to jobs springing up around new oil and gas platforms, especially in regions like Scotland and the north of England.
Still, there’s a very real danger that even if there’s a bounty of new positions created by this newest licensing round there could be vacancies that are left unfilled thanks to the skills shortage. Research recently revealed that one out of every five vacancies today is linked to the skills shortage, and this figure is growing steadily – it was only one in six back in 2009 – and there are definite fears that by adding even more open positions into the mix this figure could balloon higher even quicker.
I suppose the Government is taking a gamble on this one. Is it a good idea? I haven’t the foggiest, though of course I do hope it pans out for both the Government and the British economy in general without oil and gas companies resorting to outsourced work crews that don’t contribute directly to the UK’s financial health.
