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The Shell Exploration and Production Co. is doing something about the perennial labor shortage in the industry.
Its Tangipahoa Parish training facility, which has been open 20 years, is designed to train a work force for an industry perpetually lacking manpower. Despite high wages, job insecurity and dangerous working conditions combine to make the energy industry less attractive to potential recruits.
The Shell facility is one of two comprehensive oil and gas industry training centers in the Gulf South. Chevron runs the other in Lafayette.
About a third of the 25,000 students each year are non-Shell employees, said Tom Broom, operations learning and development manager. They range from aspiring oil field workers to industry veterans brushing up on their skills.
Opened in 1987 as a field operations training center exclusively for Shell employees, the Robert Training and Conference Center began accepting trainees from outside the company in 2004.
The open-door policy came at Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's request, Broom said. Blanco said expanding access to oil and gas-related training would...