Featured U.S. refiners face severe labor shortage for deferred maintenance

Less and less people work with their hands these days. Finding skilled labor is becoming harder by the day.

 

What did they expect when they keep laying off blue collar workers, and everyone's being told that working with your hands is bad, which then discourages younger people from wanting to pursue those types of careers.

But let's avoid sending this to Fred's house.

My guess is they're going to have to offer workers huge bonuses to do this work, especially if it's critically needed to avoid complete stoppage of refining oil, and then they're going to pass the cost onto consumers in the form of higher gas prices.

Won't bother hybrid drivers and especially plug-in drivers much. But it'll suck for all those people who rushed out to buy a truck or SUV for their long distance 1 person commute to work. Maybe that'll increase hybrid/plug in sales as a result.

 

i'm running out of patience.

 

Just another excuse to raise prices at the pump for gasoline that's already been shipped at a lower cost and increase profits.

 

Finding skilled labor & companies that care about providing their best service is becoming harder by the day,
Fixed that for you.

 

When people are willing to drive across town to save a penny per gallon on gas, then there's no such thing as being "better" at making gasoline.
It's all about the cheap.

I have family in petroleum and the "shortage of workers" for deferred maintenance is currently being met by increased outsourcing and subcontracting....which is generally how they perform shutdowns anyway, since the alternative would be to have people sitting in break rooms drawing paychecks and placing compliance training demands on the company.
Remember...
When oil goes below something like $60 per barrel, this will actually increase the size of the labor pool for shutdowns and routine maintenance because unlike exploration, production never goes much below "flat-out."
People have to fuss about SOMETHING.
Last year it was the glut of unemployed oil workers caused by OPEC's production increases.

Pipeline demands, Retiring Boomers, and the fact that most families consider themselves to have failed as parents if their precious little babies aren't sitting behind a desk with a diploma on the wall---all are putting upward pressure on labor....meaning LABOR.
Bending pipes and wires. Cutting wood. Pouring concrete. Wearing shoes made with metal and Kevlar instead of Italian leather.
Unlike general construction, you can't drive down to the nearest Home Depot and load up a truck full of day laborers to work in the petroleum industry for cash under the table and no bothersome questions.
People out in the world have this burdensome expectation that pipes shouldn't leak and refineries shouldn't go BOOM!, and thus dot.gov has all of these pesky regulations about training and security.

You can't have it both ways around.
Paying people higher wages is either good or bad.
Right now gen labor for refineries is averaging north of $20/hr (even people who cut the grass on the ROWs have to meet training norms.)
That's $20/hr on well north of 40 hours a week....with probably an average 75 hour work week.

 

Stand by - while i cry me a river .

 

Has nothing to do with labor being a bad or good thing or even whether they've laid people off or not. It has to do with those brilliant corporate leaders, who give themselves and shareholders a fat raise because they hit their quarter. These are the same people who can't see beyond the quarter they are in for planning and leading. They become surprised when their most senior people are retiring and these brilliant yahoos aren't replacing them like they should have been instead of trying to show how much they've saved the company by not filling a position and deserve a bonus. Morons. They've spent more time planning their next vacation home than talking to their mid level bosses who are probably screaming for help.

Worse, because people are so pressed for time, safety will start taking a backseat to production. Then disaster.


Unsupervised!

 

can you blame them, with most of the country lining their pockets by pouring their retirement savings into the stock market? and thanks to dot gov for keeping bank interest so low, no one can afford to put it there.

 

i hope so, but not counting on it. did you sell all your oil stocks?

 

Shell will never miss your $2k should you change.

About 4 years ago I went from an age appropriate allocation fund to all in on US stocks. Probably pull some out this year but bonds bought now have risks, CDs return 1% or so leaving what alternative? I'm sure some of our funds have petro content.

(As someone in the age group of Required Minimum Distribution, I'm all too conscious of the large 401k sum needed in retirement. So, a tip to everyone reading. Save 20% of what you make from the day you go to work. And never touch it.)

 

there's a lot of retirement money pouring into the stock market every single day. they're running out of places to put it.