this begs to get me in trouble ;^)
i would not say that there is a shortage of engineers, other scientists, or university professors. Over the past 2 yrs many 10's of thousands of the former 2 categories have been trimmed from O&G industry payrolls in north america alone. I'd venture that the 3rd category has increased in that time period so the school of mines guy is full of crap.
there are problems in matching up people to the available jobs. The field engineering jobs frequently require smart people who are willing to do dirty jobs in frequently miserable places under unpleasant conditions and those places tend to change frequently. That's why those folks frequently get paid better than folks that sit in comfortable air conditioned offices and drive home to the family every afternoon. There are many other problems: e.g. the HR people are frequently clueless as to the technical skills of applicants or the application (i.e. the HR people tend to be social 'scientists' or liberal arts majors who have never spent more time on a drill rig than what it took for the tour during their initial training). You might think that latter problem would be an obvious and relatively easy one to fix but i've been known to have naive opinions. HR people frequently do utilize field folk in recruiting but by the time the field people are involved there has already been a great deal of winnowing of schools, departments, and applicants so the potential advantage has been restricted.
The perception that the O&G biz is dying may be real. Part of this is due to the boom and bust nature of the business and the consequent effect on academic geology, geophysics, and petroleum engineering departments. Obviously, math, chemistry, engineering, and physics departments will not be affected as directly but O&G applications seem to be very low to non-existent in the list of topics to which students in those depts are introduced. Students also tend to be more idealistic and think 'green energy' is inevitable without paying attention to the practical (e.g. space & materials) and thermodynamic limitations. Consequently, new hires coming into an O&G company may be very smart chemists, physics, etc. but they have no clue about the physical characteristics of an oil reservoir or well. What we frequently get are geologists clueless of the physics, engineers and physicists clueless of the geology and, based on my experience, practically everybody is clueless of the chemistry unless it involves only hydrocarbons (the materials 'scientists' might be offended by that but that's a different topic ;^) ).
O&G wells and reservoirs and the techniques used to detect and extract oil and gas are very complex and there is no shortage of technical challenges for scientists and engineers. So if there is a perception that the O&G business is dying, then it is partially the fault of those companies for failing to 'sell' the scientific challenges to the schools and students. O&G companies do have university liaison's and outreach programs but my perception is that they fail miserably because there is a mismatch of personal aggendas. As an example, my company sponsors a 'chaired' professorship at a well known technical university, however, the professor in that position had never set foot in the company's major research lab until very recently and his research interests have nothing to do with petroleum or natural gas. Likewise, the company's university liaisons seem to be more comfortable in the wine and cheese circuit than the keg and pizza circuit. Of course, expecting good results from putting a 60 yr old guy into the keg & beer circuit would probably not be productive either.
cheers,
charlie
