Over the past few years we've seen papers and articles about the demographics of those employed in different sectors of the offshore industry. Wherever you look, the general consensus is that most of the personnel, particularly the decision-makers and those with the most accumulated knowledge, are in their late 40s and early-to-mid 50s. A typical graph of age against numbers shows a small bump around 25-30 years old, tailing off to a very long, low plateau until you get to a sharp rise at 45-48, with the numbers tailing off again at 55-plus.

What this means is that, when the current senior incumbents retire, there will be no one with commensurate experience to replace them. Is there perhaps a confluence of events and ideas that will result in an industry changed from what we know today, but still vital?

Consider the Following
In the 1970s the offshore industry was the place to be - great future, foreign travel, interesting new technology, and good money (yes, that's why we work). Working offshore was then even viewed as romantic.

Now, however, younger, bright people don't join the industry because it is notoriously unstable. The cyclic swings of boom and bust that used to be reckoned to be around seven years long now seem more like 18 months. The pay is not that great - working offshore is really fairly unsociable and the prospect of being laid-off in a few years is not too enticing. Many of the fascinating foreign countries so attractive 30 years ago are becoming more hostile than the North Sea.

The oil price no longer seems to have anything to do with any of it. In spite of overall high oil prices and record earnings, at the slightest hint of a downturn operators start cutting back and, without their upstream expenditure, there's nothing left to trickle down to support a dwindling skilled industry workforce. There is also a drive by operators to reduce costs by whatever means.

So, not a lot of encouragement there: once the skilled and experienced senior folk leave, the offshore work will still be there to do. Subsea fields and structures will still need to be built and maintained - hydrocarbons will be the primary fuel source for this planet for many years to come. Add to that the new element of deepwater - we're drilling and developing ever deeper oilfields at depths where human beings simply cannot work directly and conventional surface controlled and powered vehicles are hampered by longer and more cumbersome power and data cables. It's really to this area that my remarks are directed.

On the other side, we have exciting new, cutting-edge technology coming of age: autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) for intervention, maintenance, and repair (IMR). They will ultimately be capable of working at full ocean depth for extended periods without resurfacing except for periodic maintenance. The snag is that their infrastructure is expensive to install and even more expensive to retrofit to existing fields. But once in place, the cost savings from these vehicles are tremendous (already demonstrated by the currently operational survey AUVs).

However, the cost savings will be achieved not for the contractors that currently perform IMR tasks offshore, but for the operators. The contractors and their equipment manufacturers are expected to develop and provide ever more sophisticated vehicles and technology to help bring down operation and production costs, even at the expense of their own revenues and work forces.

In the case of IMR, the bulk of the offshore cost (and profit to the contractor) is the dedicated dynamically-positioned (DP) ship and the ROV crew. The introduction of autonomous IMR vehicles will reduce the dependence on DP ships because it will be possible for the ROV pilot to control his vehicle from a remote location - on the field platform in the near future, but eventually back in an office in Houston or even somewhere else in the world once broadband high-speed satellite communication is more commonplace. Good for the operators, but bad for the contractors. The introduction of these vehicles is inevitable, but will be greeted with little enthusiasm by contractors, who will see their revenues being reduced.

Are the Stars Aligning?
My thoughts on this are, however, that the graying of the workforce and the introduction of new technology may actually be compatible with and beneficial to each other. The older workforce is not suddenly going to disappear, and IMR AUVs are not suddenly going to take over all tasks. However, a combination of aging and cost reduction means fewer people in the job market (unless the industry suddenly becomes incredibly attractive to graduates) with offshore tasks still needing to be carried out, particularly in fields as old as some of these new graduates.

There are also many new people who do not want to go offshore for weeks on end, but who are well qualified in new technologies and fascinated by what they see in this area. These new recruits have grown up with computers and video games and may not have the necessity to have to touch and feel their subsea equipment or view the worksite in 3D (although that technology will also inevitably become commonplace).

If we put these two sweeping statements together, I think that over the next five to 10 years we could see a natural process of attrition reducing the available work force, while at the same time the introduction of new AUV seafloor technologies will allow control of the work and subsea processing to be carried out offsite using increasingly smart technology. The newly available workforce will hopefully view this technology as "cool" and be attracted to using it professionally, thus filling the age gap in the younger end of the workforce. It will also provide a technology bridge between what we have been using to date and the next generation of seafloor tools.

Meanwhile, the industry will hopefully learn to control the effects of its cyclic nature and avoid knee-jerk reaction layoffs every time there's the slightest downward fluctuation in oil price. The offshore industry could therefore once again be attractive to graduates and those with a desire to explore earthbound frontiers. Operators should also become more involved in directing the development of new technology and participating in its development costs. Contractors will be able to switch from ROVs to AUV technology in a controlled and cost-effective way, and the operators will achieve their cost-effective operations without hurting a very talented workforce.