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The Oil and Gas sector is still recovering from some difficult times in the recent past and has adapted a high-performing culture to generate more from less. That has also translated to replacing the older, expensive resources to younger, cheaper talents and leveraging the gig workforce.
Thus having a few decades of experience in your kitty might sound like a huge advantage but in reality, this might become a burden if you are in the job market and competing with your younger counterparts, especially in this dynamic energy industry. The reputation of being redundant and lack of acceptance of newer skills can precede you and shroud the recruiter’s decision.
However, there is always a demand for experience in the job market and the top oil and gas companies are in a lookout for personnel, who have relevant prior experiences and are ready to adjust to the evolving changes in this industry.
Upskilling to remain relevant in this industry is crucial for the ageing workforce but when you are seeking a new job, everything zeros down to getting an opportunity to demonstrate your ability to the recruiter.
The first hurdle is to have a cracking resume or curriculum vitae that get shortlisted for the next round.
Here we share some tricks to age-proof your resume and check all the right boxes in a recruiter’s mind within the first 6 seconds of their short attention span.*
1. Be creative to attract attention
The best weapons you have are the skills that were acquired during the long tenure spent in this industry. It can easily become a drawback for your resume if you tend you write extensively about all these skill-sets and fail to understand what the specific job opening demands from its candidates.
It is advisable to select your skills carefully and highlight them with more visuals and fewer words. Use graphs and percentages instead of long sentences to make your resume stand out. Try to feature them on the front page and showcase only the relevant skills for the job you are applying.
2. Downplay on dates
Now, this can be a little tricky but not difficult. Do not unnecessarily highlight personal information like age and if needed move it to an obscure corner of your resume where there are lesser chances of it to be noticed.
While, for some jobs, the academic credentials are necessary to be mentioned, we recommend to feature these on the front page with the degree and university name but try and avoid the graduation dates. The recruiter might indulge in quick math to estimate your age. Also, when you mention the job history, maintain the chronology but avoid mentioning the start and end dates.
Please note that none of the above implies for you to submit misleading information to your prospective employer at any given stage of the recruitment process.
3. Highlight the recent and relevant experiences
There has been a massive shift in oil and gas processes, equipment and technology in the last few decades. Improvements in drilling mechanism, data-collecting sensors, technology to improve worker’s safety, etc. have changed most upstream and downstream jobs.
You might have also gone through this age of transformation but your resume might look dated if you end up mentioning the entire history.
Keep it crisp and recent; bypass mentioning any experience that may not be relevant today and does minimal value-add showcasing your talent for the new job. If you have moved out of oil and gas industry sometime during your career, keep it off the resume unless that experience adds value to the current job opening.
You ideally should be showcasing all the accolades that came your way throughout your professional life. Craft your messaging around mentions about the impact of your performance on the employer’s top-line and bottom-line results.
Having said this, under no circumstance should you use incorrect career or skill information in your resume.
4. Speak the language of the recruiter
Pick terminologies mentioned in the job description and highlight them in your resume. Try to tailor-make the resume to befit the job description and hence easier for the recruiter to understand your relevancy.
Keep working on your resume on a constant basis and it will become an easy task to quickly modify the variable content based on each new application.
5. Provide Social Media Coordinates
Provide the LinkedIn, Twitter and other relevant Social Media coordinates in your resume. There is a high possibility that you will be scrutinized on your social media activity and hence it is good to keep your professional social platforms details updated on your resume.
This also signals about your ability to stay relevant with the time by adopting digital communications.
Update your profile picture and preferably get it done by a professional photographer who focuses to capture your positive attitude and energy.
Maturity and leadership skills come organically to older workforce due to their extensive experience; And half the job-search battle is won if that can be captured in your resume and featured to the potential employers.
While it is discriminating and unethical to deny a job due to your age, there are several instances of biased recruitment in every industry, including oil and gas.
Bonus Tip: It is said your network is your net-worth these days. Connect with other energy sector professionals and share your experience with the community to increase your professional network.
We wish you all the best in your next job search!
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Recent headlines on the oil industry have focused squarely on the upstream side: the amount of crude oil that is being produced and the resulting effect on oil prices, against a backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic. But that is just one part of the supply chain. To be sold as final products, crude oil needs to be refined into its constituent fuels, each of which is facing its own crisis because of the overall demand destruction caused by the virus. And once the dust settles, the global refining industry will look very different.
Because even before the pandemic broke out, there was a surplus of refining capacity worldwide. According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2019, global oil demand was some 99.85 mmb/d. However, this consumption figure includes substitute fuels – ethanol blended into US gasoline and biodiesel in Europe and parts of Asia – as well as chemical additives added on to fuels. While by no means an exact science, extrapolating oil demand to exclude this results in a global oil demand figure of some 95.44 mmb/d. In comparison, global refining capacity was just over 100 mmb/d. This overcapacity is intentional; since most refineries do not run at 100% utilisation all the time and many will shut down for scheduled maintenance periodically, global refining utilisation rates stand at about 85%.
Based on this, even accounting for differences in definitions and calculations, global oil demand and global oil refining supply is relatively evenly matched. However, demand is a fluid beast, while refineries are static. With the Covid-19 pandemic entering into its sixth month, the impact on fuels demand has been dramatic. Estimates suggest that global oil demand fell by as much as 20 mmb/d at its peak. In the early days of the crisis, refiners responded by slashing the production of jet fuel towards gasoline and diesel, as international air travel was one of the first victims of the virus. As national and sub-national lockdowns were introduced, demand destruction extended to transport fuels (gasoline, diesel, fuel oil), petrochemicals (naphtha, LPG) and power generation (gasoil, fuel oil). Just as shutting down an oil rig can take weeks to complete, shutting down an entire oil refinery can take a similar timeframe – while still producing fuels that there is no demand for.
Refineries responded by slashing utilisation rates, and prioritising certain fuel types. In China, state oil refiners moved from running their sites at 90% to 40-50% at the peak of the Chinese outbreak; similar moves were made by key refiners in South Korea and Japan. With the lockdowns easing across most of Asia, refining runs have now increased, stimulating demand for crude oil. In Europe, where the virus hit hard and fast, refinery utilisation rates dropped as low as 10% in some cases, with some countries (Portugal, Italy) halting refining activities altogether. In the USA, now the hardest-hit country in the world, several refineries have been shuttered, with no timeline on if and when production will resume. But with lockdowns easing, and the summer driving season up ahead, refinery production is gradually increasing.
But even if the end of the Covid-19 crisis is near, it still doesn’t change the fundamental issue facing the refining industry – there is still too much capacity. The supply/demand balance shows that most regions are quite even in terms of consumption and refining capacity, with the exception of overcapacity in Europe and the former Soviet Union bloc. The regional balances do hide some interesting stories; Chinese refining capacity exceeds its consumption by over 2 mmb/d, and with the addition of 3 new mega-refineries in 2019, that gap increases even further. The only reason why the balance in Asia looks relatively even is because of oil demand ‘sinks’ such as Indonesia, Vietnam and Pakistan. Even in the US, the wealth of refining capacity on the Gulf Coast makes smaller refineries on the East and West coasts increasingly redundant.
Given this, the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis will be the inevitable hastening of the current trend in the refining industry, the closure of small, simpler refineries in favour of large, complex and more modern refineries. On the chopping block will be many of the sub-50 kb/d refineries in Europe; because why run a loss-making refinery when the product can be imported for cheaper, even accounting for shipping costs from the Middle East or Asia? Smaller US refineries are at risk as well, along with legacy sites in the Middle East and Russia. Based on current trends, Europe alone could lose some 2 mmb/d of refining capacity by 2025. Rising oil prices and improvements in refining margins could ensure the continued survival of some vulnerable refineries, but that will only be a temporary measure. The trend is clear; out with the small, in with the big. Covid-19 will only amplify that. It may be a painful process, but in the grand scheme of things, it is also a necessary one.
Infographic: Global oil consumption and refining capacity (BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2019)
| Region | Consumption (mmb/d)* | Refining Capacity (mmb/d) |
| North America | 22.71 | 22.33 |
| Latin America | 6.5 | 5.98 |
| Europe | 14.27 | 15.68 |
| CIS | 4.0 | 8.16 |
| Middle East | 9.0 | 9.7 |
| Africa | 3.96 | 3.4 |
| Asia-Pacific | 35 | 34.75 |
| Total | 95.44 | 100.05 |
*Extrapolated to exclude additives and substitute fuels (ethanol, biodiesel)
Market Outlook:
End of Article
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Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, based on Bloomberg L.P. data
Note: All prices except West Texas Intermediate (Cushing) are spot prices.
The New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) front-month futures contract for West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the most heavily used crude oil price benchmark in North America, saw its largest and swiftest decline ever on April 20, 2020, dropping as low as -$40.32 per barrel (b) during intraday trading before closing at -$37.63/b. Prices have since recovered, and even though the market event proved short-lived, the incident is useful for highlighting the interconnectedness of the wider North American crude oil market.
Changes in the NYMEX WTI price can affect other price markers across North America because of physical market linkages such as pipelines—as with the WTI Midland price—or because a specific price is based on a formula—as with the Maya crude oil price. This interconnectedness led other North American crude oil spot price markers to also fall below zero on April 20, including WTI Midland, Mars, West Texas Sour (WTS), and Bakken Clearbrook. However, the usefulness of the NYMEX WTI to crude oil market participants as a reference price is limited by several factors.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration
First, NYMEX WTI is geographically specific because it is physically redeemed (or settled) at storage facilities located in Cushing, Oklahoma, and so it is influenced by events that may not reflect the wider market. The April 20 WTI price decline was driven in part by a local deficit of uncommitted crude oil storage capacity in Cushing. Similarly, while the price of the Bakken Guernsey marker declined to -$38.63/b, the price of Louisiana Light Sweet—a chemically comparable crude oil—decreased to $13.37/b.
Second, NYMEX WTI is chemically specific, meaning to be graded as WTI by NYMEX, a crude oil must fall within the acceptable ranges of 12 different physical characteristics such as density, sulfur content, acidity, and purity. NYMEX WTI can therefore be unsuitable as a price for crude oils with characteristics outside these specific ranges.
Finally, NYMEX WTI is time specific. As a futures contract, the price of a NYMEX WTI contract is the price to deliver 1,000 barrels of crude oil within a specific month in the future (typically at least 10 days). The last day of trading for the May 2020 contract, for instance, was April 21, with physical delivery occurring between May 1 and May 31. Some market participants, however, may prefer more immediate delivery than a NYMEX WTI futures contract provides. Consequently, these market participants will instead turn to shorter-term spot price alternatives.
Taken together, these attributes help to explain the variety of prices used in the North American crude oil market. These markers price most of the crude oils commonly used by U.S. buyers and cover a wide geographic area.
Principal contributor: Jesse Barnett
Key findings