Times have changed in the oil business

This is the first blog post on the brand new Drillers.com site. The site was created almost 20 years ago. In 1996 the oil industry was very different. The stagflation of the 70’s and the even the crash of 87 were almost out of memory. We still subscribed to certain ‘facts’ and paradigms.

Do you remember peak oil? Different experts were trying to nail a particular date or period where supply or accessable reserves would be in constant decline… It was said that with population growth rates and developing countries putting pressure on supply who knows what might happen? It takes a long time for the Earth to ‘make’ new oil…

Do you remember how OPEC could influence global prices, and when other main oil producing countries had a major influence in the global oil ‘arms race’.

Time and time again so called facts, and expert predictions end up being completely wrong. Science is based on this, it constantly holds facts to empirical scrutiny and discovers that we have been wrong all along.

A new dawn for the oil business…

The oil business appears to have changed ‘forever’. It is hard to imagine oil back at $100 bbl any time soon. I don’t believe in predictions, but for the sake of business planning, it is a safe bet that oil prices will remain relatively low for the next few years.

Peak oil theorists did not see shale fracing coming, which accelerates mother natures process. Political Economists are unlikely to have predicted a race to the bottom as far as oil prices are concerned. If we went back to 2005 and said that not only would every major oil producing country not restrict supply to support prices, but would pump even more until oil was in the 20’s… Who could have predicted that?

When drillers.com was conceived, renewable energy was definitely not cost effective and no alternative to oil at all.

Drillers.com has been known best as a jobs site and was one of the internet leaders in this respect. Later on, other features were added that are incredibly valuable such as the math cad calculation feature. Over time the jobs market has changed, during the rich boom times thousands of recruiters sprang up, to fill the need for ‘close fit’ candidates that were needed urgently. CV’s were guarded and dozens of websites attracted visitors by re-posting other peoples news, they did this in order to collect CV’s/resume’s.

It is not just the major oil producing countries that are racing to the bottom on price… Recruiters and job sites have been racing to the bottom on quality.

Nowadays, if you want CV’s you can source them by the thousands. There are many online jobs sites that allow complete access. There are plenty of CV’s floating around from the social media spammers who post jobs on group pages, jobs that often don’t exist. Recruiters quit or get fired and bring their databases with them, these end up getting circulated…

If you cruise around many oil and gas websites it looks like there are thousands of new jobs available, and millions of candidates. In the real world anyone in the industry knows that the jobs market is the toughest it has been, in most peoples lifetimes…

So as the oil industry moves to a new paradigm, so will drillers.com. The new website will be a about individual people, and individual help and support. No recruiter needs a million CV’s and no job seeker needs spam job offers that do not exist.

Drillers.com will join a race back to quality. There will be no cut-and-paste ‘curated’ news reports, or job opportunities that do not exist. The best features will stay, and more quality features will be added over time. Every community area will be strictly moderated for spam or abuse, every resource will be periodically checked for accuracy and quality.

There are around a dozen new features planned for drillers.com. The best of the old will stay, and the most interesting and helpful of the new will join.

Drillers.com will be a place where you can spend time and almost lose track of time. There will be independent expert advice and opinion when you need it. There will be a community of business leaders who also want a more efficient, stable future for the industry.

The race to quality will be a committed one, the junk will be avoided, or fiercely weeded out. One day we hope that every regular visitor sees themselves as being part of a new wave looking towards the future.

We expect that anyone posting comments or articles here will share the mantra:

If you are a friend of drillers.com then you are a friend of mine!