Oil Patch Insider: Elliott replaces Giesler at Glacier; Recruiting to increase in oil patch

Kay Cashman

Petroleum News

Carl F. Giesler Jr., president and CEO of Glacier Oil & Gas, has left the Alaska-based company to take the position of CEO and director of Jones Energy Inc. in Austin, Texas.

Phil Elliott, who has been with Glacier and its predecessor companies since April 2015, formerly carried the title chief financial officer and executive vice president and confirmed his promotion to president in an email to Petroleum News on Nov. 7.

According to Glacier’s website, prior to joining Glacier, his career was spent in the oil and gas industry in various roles with EQT Corp.

Elliott currently serves on the board of directors of Cook Inlet Spill Prevention & Response, CISPRI.

He earned his MBA from Carnegie Mellon, his MS in Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and his BA from Bucknell.

While Glacier is a privately held company, Jones is a public firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange (JONE).

Jones’ operations are in the U.S. Midcontinent (Western Anadarko and Merge), while Glacier focuses strictly on Alaska.

Created through the bankruptcy case of the former Miller Energy Resources Ltd., Glacier now operates four units in Alaska, including the West McArthur River and Redoubt units on the west side of Cook Inlet and the North Fork unit in the southern Kenia Peninsula through its subsidiary Cook Inlet Energy. On the eastern North Slope Glacier operates the Badami unit through its subsidiary Savant Alaska LLC.

Former Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell is an independent director on Glacier’s board.

At the time Petroleum News went to press there was no response from Giesler as to what if any interest Jones might have in Alaska.

- KAY CASHMAN

Recruiting to increase in oil patch

Valerie Jones, a staff member of the online publication, said Rigzone had recently conducted a survey Sept. 25 to Oct. 16 that targeted active industry recruiters and hiring managers, yielding 77 completed responses.

Eighty-two percent of the responders said they recruit for upstream, 49 percent recruit for midstream and 32 percent for downstream.

Seventy percent of the recruiters said they expected to recruit more in the next six months; 65 percent said they recruited more in the first half of 2018 than in second half of 2017. Another 21 percent said they recruited about the same in both halves.

Overall, respondents said they see the most hiring demand for the following positions:

* Safety engineer (28.57 percent)

* Procurement and construction: supply chain (22.08 percent)

* Electrical technician (22.08 percent)

* Mechanical technician (20.78 percent)

* Mechanical engineer (19.48 percent)

* Production operator (19.48 percent)

* Petroleum engineer (18.18 percent)

* Wellsite supervisor (16.88 percent)

* Electrical engineer (16.88 percent)

“However, most recruiters aren’t looking for entry-level workers. Nor are they looking to hire veteran workers,” Rigzone reported. Rather, “42 percent of respondents are hiring for workers with 5-10 years of experience. Twenty-nine percent are looking at candidates who have 10-20 years of experience,” and 27 percent are interested in entry level candidates with 0 to 5 years of experience.

For the full story see the Nov. 7 issue of Rigzone at rigzone.com.

- KAY CASHMAN

Norway, Newfoundland, Labrador still exploring Arctic

Discoveries such as the Equinor-operated Johan Castberg development in the Barents Sea and the Bay du Nord discovery in the Flemish Pass Basin offshore Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean are two of those projects

“The region, which continues to compete with onshore areas for investment dollars, still has its challenges but has managed to attract players,” Addison wrote, citing panelists on Nov. 5 at the Arctic Technology Conference in Houston.

“The change for us has been increased investments and knowledge of our prospectivity,” said Doug Trask, assistant deputy secretary of royalty and benefits for Newfoundland and Labrador’s Department of Natural Resources, who was quoted as saying. “Prior to the last five or six years we were not investing and the awareness was not there of how many basins we had and what the size of some of those potential discoveries were,” he said, noting Newfoundland and Labrador have more than 20 basins with a lot of exploration potential.

Trask credited the areas regularly scheduled license rounds as playing a role in gaining new entrants to the offshore region. The government has also made strategic investments in geoscience, including 3-D seismic data, in advance of license rounds to help attract investors, Addison reported.

“Today we produce about 1.8 billion barrels of oil from a number of facilities,” Trask said, noting the province has a 12-year plan to speed up oil and gas development offshore, looking to see more than 100 exploration wells drilled in multiple basins and increase production to more than 650,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day from the current level of about 250,000 barrels by 2030.

“We’re certainly looking to continue to develop our offshore,” Trask said. But its competitiveness hinges on the success of R&D initiatives and innovation, he said, which include remote sensing, offshore training, subsea technology and other emerging areas such as digital technology, AUVs and DNA environmental monitoring.

The fact that Norway’s Barents Sea is ice-free, a benefit of the warm Gulf Stream, during the summer has proven a benefit for Norway’s far north.

The region has two main Arctic producing fields: Equinor’s Snøhvit, which provides gas for Hammerfest LNG and the Eni-operated Goliat Field, Addison reported.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the Arctic holds more than 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered gas resources and 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil resources, she said.

To read the entire article go to hartenergy.com.

- KAY CASHMAN