The peaks and troughs of the Norwegian oil and gas sector has been highlighted by a new employment report on the sector, which shows the vast number of redundancies, but also potential green shoots of recovery down the road.
The Norwegian Oil and Gas Association said a new employment study shows the need for the recruitment of 22,000 new workers by 2020, including replacement for 9,000 retiring workers.
The report conducted by the International Research Institute of Stavanger suggests offshore redundancies will continue through to 2018. The study showed around 38,000 had lost their jobs in the Norwegian offshore sector between 2014 and 2016, with another 12,000 staff set to go by 2018.
Speaking yesterday at the Norwegian Oil and Gas Association’s annual conference in Oslo, prime minister Erna Solberg admitted times were hard.
Karl Eirik Schjott-Pedersen, director general of the Norwegian Oil and Gas Association, said: “We do not hand out job guarantees. But based on these new figures, we can say that those who start a technological education in the autumn of 2016 have a strong possibility of being greeted with open arms by the oil and gas industry when they graduate.”
