Perhaps, but are these the jobs we really need? The health impacts are significant. The number of jobs and the economic benefits of shale gas are always greatly overstated. As the entire industry is mired in debt, it has continually cut costs by automating more tasks and laying off workers. High paying skilled jobs on the drilling rigs are almost always staffed by experienced hands from elsewhere, meaning that generally only lower level and temporary jobs are offered to local workers. Currently, many NB employers cannot find people to fill jobs. Meanwhile, young people leave the province for “better” jobs. Are temporary and highly dangerous shale gas jobs the kind that will keep our young people here?
In contrast, the renewable energy field is exploding with jobs. In the US, the number of jobs producing solar electricity exceeds the number of jobs in coal, oil and gas.
Read more:
- Oil bust on par with telecom crash of dot-com era – (Houston Chronicle, Sept 2016)
- Oil, Heartbreak, And Manhood: Behind The Mental Health Crisis Of Alberta’s Oil Workers (Aug 2-17)
- Oil Workers Don’t Cry: Mental Health in the Patch (The Tyee, Aug 2010)
- The boom, the bust, the darkness: suicide rate soars in wake of Canada’s oil crisis (the Guardian, Dec 2015)
- Union outcry as automation eats up 400 oilsands jobs – and it’s just the beginning – (Global News Feb 2018)
- Rise of the Machines: Fracking Execs Plan Profits by Using Automation to Shrink Workforce – (Desmog June 2018)
- Oil Industry Plans to Keep Workers Safe—by Firing Them and Having Robots Do Their Jobs (19 Jul 2018, Desmog)
- Thousands of energy jobs lost to Alberta downturn are gone for good, economist says (Mar 7, 2018, CBC)
- Amid fading oil boom, Canada’s roughnecks seek green energy jobs– (Reuters, Aug 2017)
- Iron & Earth – oil workers are uniting as advocates for renewable energy jobs.