"It's going to be a real problem," said Tobias Read, CEO of staffing agency Swift Worldwide Resources. "I think we will find there's going to be a substantial shortage of talent coming into the market."



The roots of the oil industry's staffing problems lie in the last major oil price downturn, 30 years ago.

Following the 1980s oil bust, enrollment in petroleum engineering programs flat-lined for years, setting up a potential jobs crisis known in the industry as "the great crew change" — the point at which most of the skilled workers currently in the industry will retire and leave too few mid-career professionals to take the reins.

During the U.S. shale revolution of the last decade, the tide finally seemed to be turning.

This year, 21 U.S. colleges and universities are expected to graduate a record-setting 11,389 petroleum engineering majors, research by Texas Tech professor of petroleum engineering Lloyd Heinze and the U.S. Association of Petroleum Department Heads shows. That's the highest level since 1983, three years before the 1986 oil crash.