Labor shortage in oil patch effecting production

Houston Chronicle:

Three years ago, when crude prices still floated above $100 a barrel and the nation's oil fields were booming, Clint Concord could hire 20 new workers a day here in the West Texas oil patch to meet the constant demand from his production company clients.

But today, with the Permian Basin booming again, Concord said he's lucky to find one qualified candidate every two days to keep up with the work. Concord, a senior operations at Byrd Oilfield Service, estimates his company is losing $7,000 a day because it still doesn't have enough truck drivers to deliver equipment to its crews.

"Some people got smart and got out of the oil field," Concord said. "They're finding other career paths because they can't handle the inconsistency of it."

The oil bust that wiped out scores of companies and tens of thousands of jobs is still weighing on the industry more than 18 months after prices hit bottom in early 2016, its brutal memories contributing to a labor shortage that is slowing the energy recovery. From small companies like Byrd to global giants like Houston's Halliburton, the oil field services companies that drill, frack and haul equipment, supplies and wastewater are finding far fewer people willing to work for a boom-and-bust industry.

The shortages are frustrating oil producers and disappointing investors and analysts who had expected the surge in drilling activity that has followed rising oil prices to yield more crude and more profits. Oil executives, meanwhile, have deeper fears that the difficulty hiring is a harbinger of long-term consequences that could hobble the industry for years - or decades - to come.

The precedent is the epic 1980s oil bust, which drove a generation away from the oil industry, leaving a workforce gap that companies are struggling to fill. In recent years, companies have grappled with the challenge of replacing retiring workers in their 60s with a new generation largely under 35, without midcareer employees to aid the transition.

Even in the prolific West Texas oil patch, it's as if thousands of workers have disappeared - an eerie echo of 30 years ago. Bandy Watkins, a salesman at energy service company Pinnergy in Midland, has posted ads on social media, put up flyers in truck stops and paid for ads on radio stations and local newspapers in the search for truck drivers. But he hasn't found nearly enough to hire.

"I don't know where they went," Watkins said. "Finding fracking truck drivers is now extremely hard."
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Analysts blame a lack of available labor and fracking equipment in West Texas, where the bulk of the oil industry's nascent recovery has occurred this year. The unemployment rates of Midland and Odessa, two Texas cities at the heart of the Permian Basin, have fallen from 4.9 percent and 6.8 percent, respectively, in June 2016, to 3.2 percent and 4.3 percent in August, according to the Labor Department.

"The labor pool has been completely plundered," said Bill Herbert, an analyst at Simmons & Company International in Houston. "Growth expectations are being recalibrated."
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The companies are recruiting not only out of the area in Texas but out of state as well to find fracking truck crews.  Workers who found stable work outside the industry are reluctant to go back.  I think there is also a reduced supply of military veterans looking for work at this time, although it is probably still an area where some seasoned truck drivers can be found.