Venezuela: Fleeing Oil Workers

The Associated Press has an article up regarding fleeing Venezuelan oil workers. The first wave of fleeing oil workers occurred in 2003 after a strike and crackdown by Maduro and has since continued. Some interesting quotes:

While the most-talented engineers left long ago — many contributing to a production boom in neighboring Colombia — there’s still demand for labor throughout the industry. “We’re still in a talent-short market, especially with people willing to go into hardship locations — like Kurdistan,” said Dane Groeneveld, CEO at California-based PTS Advance, an oil industry recruiter, referring to Iraq’s Kurdish region.

Reuters, back in late December, had an article about Venezuela's oil sector. Per the article, Venezuela's PDVSA employed 152,072 in 2014. It estimates around 106,518 were employed as of 2018. That's a 40,000 drop.



Interestingly, employed personnel increased from around 45,000 in 2003 (per Wikipedia) until 2014 at 152,072. This increase occurred even though per the AP article, 30,000 left after the 2003 strike. AS/COA estimates that Venezuela produced 2,782 mb/d of oil in 2002. It peaked in 2005 at 3,067 and then just started to decline. So peak production hit in 2006, but peak employment hit in 2014. I'd say the increase in employment was driven by a drop in productivity of those employees -- probably driven by the fact that 30,000 highly skilled employees took off after 2003.

The AP article mentions that there are Venezuelan oil workers who work in more than 90 different countries. Countries like Canada, Colombia, Iraq and Kurdistan are mentioned, but I didn't read any mention of the United States. You'd think with the booming shale industry that the US would be taking in many Venezuelans. The other country not mentioned is Guyana, which is a neighbor to Venezuela. Guyana is supposed to start pumping oil starting in 2020, which is just a few months away (don't know if this production is at the start of 2020 or the end of 2020). More production will come online in 2022. The country has a population of less than 800,000. I'm betting a number of Venezuelans could find work in Guyana over the next couple years. How many will Guyana need? Let's say 5,000 or 10,000. Guyana will take the best of the remaining 106,518.

Even if Maduro is over-thrown in this latest round of protests, it isn't like the country will turn around on a dime. I'd argue that Venezuela's oil industry is dead for a number of years to come due to brain drain.

(Note that Venezuela is only producing around 1.5 mb/d as of 2018 and has 106,518 workers. Back above, per Wikipedia, 45,000 personnel were pumping out 2.8 mb/d in 2002. Half of the current workers shouldn't even be needed if Venezuela had a highly trained employee base.)