While oil and gas is rebounding, offshore jobs remain hard to find

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Erin Donlon came to the Offshore Technology Conference for the first time this week, immersing himself in the world of deepwater drilling — a world that, until recently, he was sure he'd want to enter himself. The pay was great and the work seemed exciting, so when Donlon arrived at Maine Maritime Academy as the oil boom accelerated in 2013, he set his sights on oil rigs. Now, with the industry still shaking off the worst bust in 30 years, he considers himself fortunate that he's not graduating until December, hoping that more opportunities open offshore. "Once we had the [oil] recession, I thought, 'That's going to be interesting,'" said Donlon, 23, one of a handful students selected to attend OTC this year from his school in Castine, Maine. "A lot of people graduating this month, they're like, 'What can I do?'"

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Renewed hiring has largely bypassed the offshore sector. Anthony Caridi, an oil and gas recruiter with the Houston firm QTSI, offered a grim assessment of the situation for those still looking for work. "Anything drilling is a no-go," he says. "Offshore is even more of a no-go."

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She was flooded with resumes during the bust, and most of those workers are still around. "I wouldn't say that the pool of applicants has contracted," Howes says. "There are still companies that are going through reductions in force, and there are people who are still looking, they've been looking for a while." That pool includes Tarek Ghazi, a geologist with 40 years of experience, 20 spent at ConocoPhillips before working for several other companies. He was laid off from a small reservoir data firm last November, and has had a few interviews since. But he remains philosophical about the experience, which he knows is inevitable in the boom-and-bust cycles of oil and gas. "I would never get discouraged, because that is the nature of the industry," he says. For that reason, he's careful not to get too excited about hints of a recovery. "I don't know if it is a real uptick, or a bunch of self-reinforcing rumors."

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