There's Something Happening Here
And what it is, is how an industry can be destroyed through propaganda and agitprop.
Look, not everybody has the intellectual bones to be a petroleum engineer, so the numbers of them graduating are going to be on the low side to start with. I didn’t have the discipline or the talent to do it, so I went in another direction.
According to Payscale, petroleum engineering pays, on average, $97,500 a year, which is about four to five times what a Starbucks barista with a master’s degree in gender studies gets paid.
I slid back into the oil and gas biz after a few years of working in other industries and it is amazing how much has changed since I got out in 2020.
We routinely have difficulty finding engineers with the talent we are looking for; I just went through a cycle to get three Manufacturing Engineers and a Manufacturing Engineering Manager, and I would estimate I tossed about 90% of the resumes from recent engineering graduates and a good 80% or so of the experienced candidates for the manager position.
One follows the other. When the numbers of good entry level candidates go down precipitously, it stands to reason that within a few short years, the population of good, experienced leaders goes down as well – and not all engineers want to manage, some are perfectly happy just engineering.
Studies are now beginning to show that it isn’t that candidates can’t work in our industry, they just don’t want to work in the industry – and sociopolitical forces are a big part of why we can’t find enough talent.
This is an example of how propaganda and agitprop, when constantly delivered, really works.
Fossil fuels have been attacked for years, but never more aggressively than during the radical energy hating Obama and Biden administrations. Biden has taken it even farther by promising to end the hydrocarbon industry by destroying oil, gas and coal production and replacing it with “clean energy” that doesn’t work, and if it does cannot touch the concentrations, safety, and BTU output of so-called “fossil fuels”.
Never mind that internal combustion engines work far more often in all extremes of climate conditions (which EVs can’t claim) and modern, computer controlled, fuel injected powerplants are anywhere from 5 to 20 times more efficient and cleaner per horsepower produced than the carbureted engines of the 70’s and 80’s. The carbon output of a new 5.2-liter (essentially 350 cubic inch) Chevy engine is less than 20% of a comparable 350 cubic inch version of the same engine produced in 1970.
That’s just the truth.
But the propaganda about hydrocarbons never stops.
From John Solomon’s great site “Just the News”:
“Dirty Jobs” celebrity, producer, author, podcaster and skilled-trades advocate Mike Rowe told Just The News that the stigma is a problem across industries. “You've got stigmas, stereotypes, myths and misperceptions that have really coalesced, in my view, over the last couple of decades in a way that coincides, ironically — or maybe not ironically, and maybe just practically — with the removal of shop class from high schools.”
No surprise when these kids have been taught since kindergarten that the fossil fuels industry is going to kill them and the planet during their lifetimes.
Molly Determan, president of the Energy Workforce & Technology Council said in the same article:
“There is a challenge for the oil and gas industry that we face collectively due to the false narrative about our industry, and we’re having to work against a message that just isn’t true.”
College students shouldn’t think they have to apologize for working in the oil and gas industry.
Nobody talks about the things the hydrocarbon industry has done to advance the standard of living for people worldwide. GenZ kids have no idea that the world would fall into savagery and barbarity if the oil, gas and coal industries are destroyed.
Mike Rowe noted in the Just the News article that:
“If we're not fundamentally grateful for the miracle that happens when we flick the switch ... if we don't understand the miracle of modern plumbing, then we're not going to have a great deal of respect for the workers who are on the front lines of those vocations.”
Buffalo Springfield sang:
There's something happening here
But what it is ain't exactly clear…
It is actually pretty clear.
I think it's time we stop
Children, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down…
Michael, it is increasingly difficult to discover competence across the entire spectrum of our 'modern' economy. I thrived in the first couple of years of engineering in college, and then my interests changed. The thinking and analysis skills learned in that short interval have served well all my life. The polymath interests continue to be shared with and taken up by my heirs and assigns. Educators like those who nurtured my wide range of interests and knowledge seem to be in short supply these days -- state prescribed curricula? I hope we find a return to the olden days.
Ditto in the mining industry - maybe even worse since we’re seen as “earth rapers”. I still haven’t found someone who criticizes society’s use of natural resources who is willing to go without, though, so they’ve got the hypocrisy topic dominated. Anti-resource types are nihilists; they want humanity to suffer - a LOT - and then die.