I am sick of hearing about labor supply problems in the hydrocarbon industry as it is a problem entirely of their own making. I was in the Industry for 12 years and in that time the industry laid off something like 40% of the workforce twice.

Half of my ex colleagues had to drive Uber to make ends meet for years. I remember a reservoir engineer walking down the main street in the oil city I worked in with a board saying "qualified petroleum engineer will work cheap".

I spent 4 years (and $$$) doing a master's of petroleum engineering whilst working full time. None of the 40 odd students I went through the degree with got jobs due to an industry downturn and all left the industry. We happened to graduate during a low oil price period. Too bad. So sad. 4 year degree down the drain.

This affliction of no staff happens every boom, and the mass layoffs and industry exodus happens every bust. If the industry actually planned for this cyclical nature by avoiding overexpansion in good times and reducing mass layoffs in bad times this wouldn't be an issue.