Emma McConville was thrilled when she landed a job as a geologist at Exxon Mobil in 2017. She was assigned to work on one of the company’s most exciting and lucrative projects, a giant oil field off Guyana.
But after oil prices collapsed during the pandemic, she was laid off on a video call at the end of 2020. “I probably blacked out halfway,” McConville recalled.
Her shock was short-lived. Just four months later, she landed a job with Fervo, a young Houston company that aims to tap geothermal energy under the Earth’s surface. Today she manages the design of two Fervo projects in Nevada and Utah, and earns more than she did at Exxon.
“Covid allowed me to pivot,” she said. “COVID was an impetus for renewables, not just for me but for many of my colleagues.”
Oil and gas companies laid off roughly 160,000 workers in 2020, and they maintained tight budgets and hired cautiously over the last two years. But many renewable businesses expanded rapidly after the early shock of the pandemic faded, snapping up geologists, engineers and other workers from the likes of Exxon and Chevron. Half of Fervo’s 38 employees come from fossil fuel companies, including BP, Hess and Chesapeake Energy.
Executives and workers in energy hubs in Houston, Dallas and other places say steady streams of people are moving from fossil fuel to renewable energy jobs. It’s hard to track such movements in employment statistics, but the overall numbers suggest such career moves are becoming more common. Oil, gas and coal employment has not recovered to its pre-pandemic levels. But the number of jobs in renewable energy, including solar, wind, geothermal and battery businesses, is rising.
The oil and gas industry had roughly 700,000 fewer workers last year than six years earlier, a decline of over 20%. Much of that drop had to do with the slowing of the shale drilling boom and greater automation. By comparison, employment in wind energy grew nearly 20% from 2016 to 2021, to more than 113,000 workers.
In more than a dozen interviews, energy workers and executives said they had switched to renewable energy because they felt the oil and gas industry’s best days were behind it. Others said they were no longer willing to tolerate the extreme ups and downs of oil and gas prices, and the accompanying cycle of rapid hiring followed by crushing layoffs. Many said concerns about climate change, which is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels, were a factor in their decision.
Jean Paul Beebe negotiated land leases for oil and gas companies before he was laid off early in the pandemic. He now works for Enel North America, a developer of renewable projects that is owned by an Italian energy company. He made a good living when shale drilling was booming, he said, but downturns took a toll on him.
“Riding that wave is a load, mentally,” Beebe said. “What I know now about renewables, it’s absolutely more stable.”
Many workers, including electricians, offshore construction engineers, information technology specialists and environmental surveyors, say the skills they honed in their oil and gas jobs have translated well to the work they are doing now.
“The basics are the same,” Miguel Febres, a petroleum engineer who worked in the oil industry for 19 years and is now a planner for wind and solar projects at Enel. “We install foundations, we install turbines, we build roads, we lay cables.”
The Greater Houston Partnership, which champions the interests of businesses in a city that is home to many large oil and gas businesses, has been trying to attract more renewable businesses to the region. A recent study for the group by McKinsey & Co. found that 125,000 oil exploration, production and pipeline jobs were lost in the Houston area from 2014 to 2020, a 26% reduction. The study warned that many more traditional energy jobs could be lost over the next three decades.
“The workforce of the future is going to look very different than it looks today,” said Jane Stricker, senior vice president for energy transition at the Greater Houston organization and a former executive at BP. She noted that dozens of startups had opened or relocated to Houston since 2020, some with as many as 50 employees.
“Covid created a ton of opportunity,” she said. “Nobody was making investments in oil and gas because returns were terrible. A lot of money out there was looking for a new opportunity.”
Executives at renewable companies say being in Houston has helped them attract workers.
“Whenever we post a position like geologist, or drilling engineer or geophysicist,” said Tim Latimer, the chief executive of Fervo, the geothermal company, “you name the oil company and we have a handful of applicants from every single one.”
Oil and gas executives say that there are still many good years of employment left in their industry, and that it continues to serve a vital mission.
Scott Sheffield, chief executive of Pioneer Natural Resources, a major Texas oil and gas producer, said that “the realization that we have provided energy security for the country and our foreign partners along with a stable and cheap energy source to our citizens” continued to make the industry desirable professionally.
Trent Latshaw, chief executive of Latshaw Drilling, which operates rigs in Oklahoma and Texas, said the demise of oil and gas jobs was greatly exaggerated. “A lot of people have been brainwashed that oil and gas are on the way out,” he said. “The oil industry so massively outweighs renewables and will for a very long time.”
But even Latshaw acknowledged that renewables were growing in importance.
Sunnova Energy, a leading solar and battery provider based in Houston, has expanded its staff to 1,400, from 350 in March 2020. Last year it doubled its Houston office space. Its information technology staff alone has grown to around 200 from roughly 70 over the last two years. — The New York Times
Clifford Krauss is a national energy business correspondent based in Houston.
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