The Oil Creek's Oil Patch

The “ Oil Patch” in the United States has been feast or famine since the discovery of crude oil in Oil Creek, Pennsylvania. Each time the price rises for a barrel of Crude oil specialized and hard workers are needed to pull this resource from the ground. I would compare a boom cycle to the likes of a gold rush. When oil prices are high, there is a feeling that the good times will never end, employee salaries sky rocket, and people are willing to go just about anywhere to get a piece of this pie. When the market is in the “ Bust” cycle, those same employees begin to fear for their job and don’t understand why they must take a pay cut when they have maintained their same production level. I would like to discuss the trend in the oil field …show more content…
Place’s like North Dakota, Wyoming, and New Mexico are a few of the new fields that have been discovered in recent years. These are all remote states with small and usually spread out populations. How does the oil industry expect to raise a work force in this area? The answer is paying high enough wages to attract experienced oil field workers to uproot from their current situation and relocate to where you need them. Experience is the important factor in starting the new workforce. Locals can be hired and trained at entry positions, but what is required in these situations is a complete infrastructure build. Items that are considered when starting in a new area are housing, hiring process, orientation of experienced employees, and training of new employees. The atmosphere in these areas is incredible to witness. Restaurants start popping up, hotels begin to be built, and larger companies book them up in advance. New apartment complexes have waiting lists as soon as construction starts. RV parks are overflowing with oil workers and families, who have given up on finding anything else affordable. And roadside hotel brands like the Hampton Inn and Holiday Inn Express are charging as much as $300 a night.1 There have been situations where conex boxes, which are the storage containers you see on the large …show more content…
When oil is discovered in a new region it is an all out mad dash to get established in the area as quick as possible. If you are the first service company in the area, then you will be the first called. These new companies are almost always structured in a dramatically different way from the industry's incumbents. They generally choose to focus on a narrow section, or even one segment of the value chain.3 If the company does a good job servicing the well, then they will get the call the next time your service is needed. This makes it harder for any competitors to get a foothold. Price is a very small factor to the drilling company; their major concern is getting the hole completed quickly and their product to market. I say all this because if price isn’t a factor, your competitors are going to have a much tougher entry to the market if you are first on the scene. This makes hiring, all local, impossible. The industry has not been in the area before, therefore few locals will have the experience needed to meet the safety and operational requirements. These two factors make it necessary to hire outside the local employee