Canada’s oil industry is booming, but companies in its top oil-producing province, Alberta, are struggling to hire and retain skilled talent to seize the opportunity of greater market access that the expanded Trans Mountain oil pipeline provides.  

Canadian oil production is rising and could rise by the most among all producers this year, analysts say. But a shortage of talent could make Canada’s renewed oil boom more difficult to sustain.  

As Boomers and Generation X are retiring, the next generations of the workforce – Millennials and Gen Z – are looking at the oil and gas industry as a dirty thing from the past, wrecking the climate and not worth their attention as job seekers. 

The University of Calgary in Alberta, where most Canadian energy companies are based, has recently heard from industry contacts that firms are struggling with staffing skilled positions. And the university now plans to restart its oil and gas engineering program, which was suspended three years ago due to very low interest and a downturn in the industry during COVID. 

“Some of our industry contacts and industry partners have been telling us increasingly over the recent months and years that they are having trouble finding qualified engineers to hire into the energy industry,” Anders Nygren, vice-dean of the Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary, told The Canadian Press‘ Amanda Stephenson in an interview last week. 

The University of Calgary suspended in the summer of 2021 admission for its oil and gas engineering bachelor program due to plummeting demand as only 10 students had registered for the course in the two years prior to the suspension. 

The university didn’t abandon oil and gas-related studies – it continues to offer petroleum-specific specializations within the fields of mechanical and chemical engineering. Currently, there are about 1,800 students enrolled in these programs, Nygren told The Canadian Press.

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