The Changing Face of Oil and Gas

According to T. Boone Pickens, as quoted in a recent Businessweek article, today’s young people ought to be looking for jobs in the oil and gas industry. Of budding oil barons, Pickens states, “Ten years ago I could not have made this statement that you have picked the right career.” And young people are taking his advice. After failing to bring in young talent for decades, the industry is now onboarding enough Millennials for this period to be dubbed “the great crew change.” Indeed, as oil and gas production undergoes a revolution thanks to horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking), Millennials are increasingly the engineers at the front lines and the managers calling the shots.

Millennials’ entry into oil and gas comes at time of major upheaval for the industry. After decades of lackluster revenues, the industry received a shot in the arm when producers began to use a combination of horizontal drilling—which enables engineers to recover more oil from far longer rock formations—and fracking to access shale reserves.  Fracking, which by some estimates is used in 90 percent of producing…