Editorial comment
On TikTok in February there was a trend where women pranked their families by calling to announce they had landed high paying jobs working in the oil and gas sector. Videos were called things like: ‘Telling my little brother (who’s a pipeline welder) I got an underwater welding position with ExxonMobil’, or ‘Telling my dad I got an offshore drilling job for the summer’. Typically, the women call their dad, or brother, and play dumb about what the jobs would realistically entail. As the New York Post explained it: “It usually begins with the woman asking her mark if they know of the energy giant ExxonMobil, then explaining she applied for and received an apprenticeship as underwater welder — for which she’ll be paid a six figure salary.”1
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The male relatives in the videos express disbelief that the (mostly young) women could fulfil the requirements of an offshore job: “That’s not anything you’d want to do”, one dad responds after a shocked, six-second pause. “Did they tell you what you’d be doing?”2
Another response goes: “You’re out in the middle of the ocean, the wind is blowing, it’s probably one of the most dangerous jobs in the world,” a dad says in response to the prank, pointing out his daughter “may die” in the role. The same dad calls the idea that the company would hire his daughter “insanity”.
The TikToks are tongue-in-cheek, and it’s funny because the viewer recognises that these calls home are a prank. The women making the videos have jobs or qualifications in unrelated fields, and their relatives are probably rightfully concerned and perplexed about their new career choice.
But it does make me think about what assumptions the general public makes about working in oil and gas. As evidenced in the trending TikTok videos, I’d say that the average person on the street sees oil and gas jobs as: well-paid and highly skilled, but also dangerous and hard to obtain.
Showcasing what it’s actually like to work in the sector is a 20 year old oil rig apprentice from Norway. Thea Uglum Håland (@theauglum) is an apprentice offshore material coordinator for Aker BP, who chronicles her daily life offshore on TikTok. She posts videos showing the everyday tasks of working offshore, and her feed is a mixture of the sublime and the mundane. Håland documents the darkness of the sea at night and stunning views from the helipad, alongside details of her 12 - 16 hour work days, the safety gear she bundles into, the glamour of laundry day, and the cramped conditions of her cabin. Her followers seem to appreciate the full picture she offers of life offshore. She’s enthusiastic and passionate about her burgeoning career and all that it entails.
In its May 2023 report, ‘Creating the workforce for an oil and gas industry in transition’, Bain & Company addresses the challenge of recruiting and keeping talent in the sector. The report states that “Progress will require company-level actions such as strategy-informed workforce planning and radical transparency, as well as industrywide coalitions to change perceptions and drive progress.”3 The report continues: “Individual companies will need to make meaningful investments in shaping their cultures toward greater inclusion, redesigning employee value propositions, and creating equitable career paths”. Employee advocacy (when a company employee acts as a spokesperson or advocate for their employer’s brand) is part of that picture, and I’d say that Håland, and others like her, perform a valuable service to the industry by interpreting the reality of oil and gas jobs to millions of young people online.
- https://nypost.com/2024/02/24/lifestyle/tiktok-trend-women-tell-families-theyre-offshore-oil-rig-workers
- https://cheezburger.com/494599/18-year-old-oil-rig-apprentice-goes-viral-for-sharing-her-day-to-day-life-in-the-middle-of-the-ocean
- https://www.bain.com/insights/creating-the-workforce-for-an-oil-and-gas-industry-in-transition
