The oil and gas industry is an important sector of the U.S. economy with United States being the third largest petroleum producer with more than 500,000 producing wells and approximately 4,000 oil and natural gas platforms operating in the U.S. waters. In totality, the oil and gas supply is about 65% of U.S. energy. The nation has about 144 refineries processing more than 17 million barrels of crude oil every day. The industries in oil and gas extraction industry operate and develop oil and gas field properties that require a huge work force. The oil and gas employers or companies do recruit construction talent and candidates as their employees for higher wages.
The employment in oil and gas industry in United States has increased to 3.4% during 2014 with the U.S. oil and gas industry having added 35,000 jobs for a net growth rate of 3.4% as reported by The Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association (TIPRO). These statistics prove that oil, gas industry is still moving forward, and job vacancies are still being advertised in company websites and job boards. The oil and gas industry throughout its life cycle of projects needs contract or contract to hire staffing, as oil and gas sector is a contract labor led industry.
This sector undergoes significant technological, process and environmental changes due to which companies look for staffing agencies and recruitment firms to help them find the right type of employees and other specialized talent. In addition, the project nature of new construction necessitates the need or demand for all types of field engineers as well those who bookend all aspects of engineering functions such as estimators, cost engineers, schedulers etc. The demand for highly technical engineering roles is on rise. In addition, the expanding development and growth of oil and gas reserves call for engineers and researchers to carry out development tasks and to find out ways for using the natural resources.
The role of staffing firms is quite important as companies in oil and gas sector are relying more on construction specific staffing firms who have expertise in recruiting, hiring and retaining highly skilled trade professionals. The energy businesses (oil and gas) or companies do understand the fact that having a healthy partnership with a solid staffing firm lessens the burden on their internal human resource departments and it assists their organization to better meet project labor requirements in an efficient manner.