The LSU Center for Energy Studies is projecting employment in the oil and gas sectors will remain flat even as the industry as a whole sees expansion in the coming years.
Study co-author, LSU professor Greg Upton, says because of changes in technology, Louisiana will likely never see the kinds of oil industry employment it had in the 70s, or even six years ago.
“The number of workers that you need to produce the same number of hydrocarbons that you needed a decade or two decades ago is just a lot less today because of advances in technology,” says Upton.
Upton says Louisiana saw peak industry employment in the 70s at 100,000, but that fell to 50,000 a few decades later, and roughly 30,000 after the 2014 crash.
But Upton says much of the loss of traditional oil sector jobs is being made up for in gains in the refining/manufacturing/export sector, which now employs people than oil production.
“A lot of people ask me, well Greg, are we even still an oil and gas state? And the answer to that is, absolutely we are just not in the way that you thought about it 15 or 20 years ago,” says Upton.
The Gulf of Mexico is expected to take on a larger share of U.S. oil production, rising from 66 percent of the nation’s production to 70 percent over the next decade, per the Advocate.
But these numbers could be upended by factors outside of the state’s control. Upton says because so much of Louisiana’s energy sector is export-based.
“If we have increased trade frictions over the next few years, that could be a really big detriment to the Louisiana economy, and a really big detriment to the refining, chemical manufacturing, and chemical export business,” says Upton.
