Know-how is everything in oil country, and the Permian region has the schools to keep its workforce in the know. Education and training are themselves an industry-within-the-industry, one that is critical to Permian Basin success and safety.
By Al Pickett, special contributor
Training and education have become a necessary industry within the oil and gas industry, according to Hoxie Smith, director of the Petroleum Professional Development Center at Midland College.
Whether it is providing required re-certification and training for professionals such as engineers, accountants, geologists, or landmen at Midland College’s PPDC or basic safety training or updated classes on ever-changing OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) regulations, there are colleges and training centers that can answer the need. Midland College, Odessa College, and numerous private companies, including Lonestar USA Safety and Training in Midland, are offering a wide variety of training and educational opportunities for those in the Permian Basin oil and gas industry.
“Oilfield workers should cover every required OSHA subject every year, although some companies don’t do it,” observed Lenard Garrett, general manager of Lonestar USA Safety and Training. “Some subjects are required every year by OSHA, while others are required only when procedures change.”
Odessa College entered into an agreement with Texas A&M earlier this year to become a designated cooperative learning center for TEEX (Texas A&M Engineering Services) classes, one of only a handful of such learning centers in the state. Carla Clark, the director of workforce development at Odessa College, says it is a tremendous benefit to the oil and gas industry in the Permian Basin to provide safety and health hazard awareness classes in Odessa rather than requiring industry health and safety specialists to travel to College Station for their training.
While the courses offered vary greatly, the bottom line is it is “Back to School” time year-round for those working in all facets of the oil and gas industry.
Professional Training
Smith said more than 2,500 industry professionals take classes each year at Midland College’s PPDC, many of those being individuals who are new to the Permian Basin.
“We put on courses and symposiums that help engineers, accountants, geologists, and landmen relative to their jobs,” he stated. “The demographics of those attending our classes have changed in the last 10 years. When I started, there were a lot fewer classes, and the people we got had been in the industry for quite some time. When the unconventional and shale plays began, we started seeing younger and younger people. There weren’t enough people to go around. When these young professionals get to the Permian Basin, companies send the new hires here to bring them up to speed, on the industry in general, but particularly on the Permian Basin. We send them back to work with a heavy dose of information from the classroom and additional take-home material.”
Certification is required for many professionals, including engineers, geoscientists, oil and gas accountants, and landmen, according to Smith.
“They receive professional development hours by attending our classes,” he explained. “They get the credits they need to stay certified.”
Smith added there are many other people in the Permian Basin who are not professional engineers or geoscientists.
“But they attend classes on horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, which are the trends in the industry today,” he continued. “We also offer classes on waterflooding and CO2 flooding. A lot of older people take classes, too, because they want to keep improving.”
Smith said the application in the field of new technology is important, citing the Wolfberry as an example that began as a vertical play utilizing the fracturing of multiple intervals and commingling of multiple zones. Other plays followed, he offered, by going lateral and employing 16 to 30 fracture stages per lateral.
“Now, in the Delaware Basin, they are doing dual laterals in different zones,” he pointed out. “A lot of the new technology is about hydraulic fracturing. Time is money, to get to the resources effectively and economically and do it in an environmentally safe manner.”
When the current boom began in 2006 and 2007, Smith claimed many people started coming into the Permian Basin from other areas of the country. They are underemployed or unemployed, he notes, and typically don’t have experience in the oil field, so they wanted to get a “heavy dose [of learning] in a short time.”
“We also get a lot of people in our land classes,” he remarked. “Companies have to have leases before they drill. You don’t need a degree to be a land man, though it certainly helps. You can go to our classes and be ready to go to the courthouse and get to work.”
Smith acknowledged that the PPDC doesn’t have much communication with drilling companies, who often train their new hires on the job.
“But we do put on well control classes six times a year,” he related. “Drilling supervisors need WellCap certification from the Independent Drilling Contractors Association of America. We also offer a drilling fluids course to train people to be mud engineers.”
Smith emphasized that he and the PPDC are sticklers about hiring the “best instructors we can.”
“We always try to get experts in the industry,” he claimed. “Classes typically run one to five days. The most common are two- to three-day courses. We also teach a lot of computer classes. Companies are all using sophisticated software, and geologists and engineers, for example, have to have training.”
Safety and Health Training
Clark said the cooperative agreement between Odessa College and TEEX is focused on certified safety and health officials (CSHO) for the general and construction industry, which includes the oil and gas industry. The Odessa College classes include medical training, CPR, and general safety standards, as well as instruction on hydrogen sulfide (H2S), the poisonous gas that is prevalent in many Permian Basin wells and requires respiratory protection.
Odessa College, which began teaching classes under the agreement with Texas A&M in March, has classes scheduled through Dec. 18. Most classes range from 15 to 40 hours, according to Clark.
As Odessa College gets its new courses up and running, the hope is to dovetail those courses with the college’s occupational health and safety program for an associate’s degree, meaning students taking the CSHO courses through the TEEX cooperative agreement can earn credits that will apply to the degree program, Clark stated.
“We hope to offer that in the next six months or so,” she pointed out, “and expand our program with Texas A&M. We know how critical safety is. People need to be properly trained.”
Clark said Odessa College is also going to set a date soon to offer a new OSHA general hazardization and standards class.
“This program is a great asset for our community, the Permian Basin, and Odessa College,” she added. “We hope people will know that we are offering classes through the TEEX cooperative. They can go to our website and know when the class they want will be offered.”
Private Training
Training and education for those working in the Permian Basin oil and gas industry is not limited to just local colleges, however. Numerous local companies offer courses covering a wide range of topics.
“We do everything,” said Garrett, who has been teaching classes and doing training for Lonestar USA Safety and Training for 16 years. “We teach safety classes on H2S, confined space, CPR, and First Aid. We get a lot of first-timers because we do new-hire orientation for a number of companies.”
He stated that other companies send their employees to Lonestar each year for refresher courses.
“We are a full service safety and training company,” Garrett added. “Not only do we teach classes, but we do accident investigations and inspections to make sure they stay in compliance.”
He added that Lonestar also does “fit testing” to determine if respirators, which are required for paint contractors as well as by the oil and gas industry for H2S, fit properly. Garrett said Lonestar also does hearing tests each year for employees of some companies.
He said classes are updated as new regulations come out. Most of the courses offered by Lonestar USA Safety and Training use a Powerpoint presentation.
“OSHA puts out a new rule, and we can make it more specific to the oil and gas industry and to the Permian Basin with our Powerpoint presentation,” Garrett said. “The rules often stay the same, but [it’s a matter of] how to apply those changes.”
In the case of most classes concerning OSHA regulations, he said the only proof of certification that OSHA requires is the sign-up sheet of the class.
Garrett admitted that it is hard to determine how many classes his company conducts in a typical week.
“We have one customer that requires its employees to attend a week-long class that covers 30 subjects,” he stated. “This week I am doing 12 safety meetings and training for companies in house and will teach 50 to 75 subjects. Next week it might be 45 or 50.”
Lonestar will teach classes at both its office in Midland or on site for its customers, according to Garrett.
While a few companies may still do their own training, most are now using a third party to provide safety training and education on new trends, as well as new rules and regulations, thus spawning an industry within the oil and gas industry. Fortunately, more and more companies are realizing the importance that such training can hold for the safety and productivity of their employees.