Lesson's Learned and what's in store for 2016?

The Oil & Gas Industry has had an extremely turbulent 2015 with Oil prices and exploration downturn a lot worse than my last personal experience back in 2008. No doubt quite a few others will be able to tell me how bad it was in the 1980’s, but still not as bad as it is now.

It looks like 2016 is going to be just as testing with budgets still in place for the financial year and no sign of exploration increase for 2016/2017, companies on 3rd or 4th rounds of consultation for redundancies and Iran still to have their export embargo uplifted which will no doubt see the oil price dip even lower. We even have the US looking to end a 40 year oil export ban as a possible lifeline plus Saudi Arabia have had to release new spending plans as the continued low oil price is severely hampering their revenue.

So what will the Oil & Gas industry take from 2015? I always hear when a drilling project is due to end about ‘Lessons Learned’, but will the oil industry take heed of lessons learned from 2015 and how the industry was run previously?

With the reduction in Service Company, rig and personnel costs, many are saying that now should be the time to undertake exploration activity and utilise the downturn, rather than wait until prices (hopefully) bounce-back and so do the costs. Do you agree?

For the UK, after both the March and Summer budgets where the Government had reaffirmed their commitment to investment plus support exploration and improve access to decommissioning tax relief, this does not seem to have made much difference so far, when we will see this take affect? With 14 wells drilled in 2014, a decrease on that number in 2015 of approx. 50% and it looks like a low number again in 2016 – What, if anything can the Government promise or assist with now to increase activity?

Being in a recruitment role, I have a lot of contact and approaches from those unfortunate to have lost their positions and struggling to get back out to work over the last 12 months, sadly I cannot assist most.  For those who have transferrable skills, please keep looking at alternatives to the Oil & Gas industry – such a renewables as it is always good to keep your options open and hopefully when the market does come back, you will then be in a better position to gain work back in the sector. Build working relationships with recruiters who you feel are professional enough to represent you and hopefully this will come to fruition.

I will continue to assist all those I can when applying for available positions or even if it just contacting for some advice, but please keep going and hopefully we will see a turnaround in 2016.

Hope everyone enjoys their New Years’ Eve and welcoming in a very much needed 2016.