Well inspectors lured by higher pay to industry jobs

• Katie Colaneri
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Katie Colaneri is a reporter for StateImpact Pennsylvania and WHYY in Philadelphia covering energy and the environment. Before joining StateImpact, Katie worked as an investigative and enterprise reporter at WBGO in Newark, New Jersey. She covered some of New Jersey's biggest stories including the devastation and aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, as well as the day-to-day triumphs and struggles to revitalize state's largest city. A native of New Jersey with roots in South Central Pennsylvania, Katie holds a bachelor's degree from Wellesley College.

E&E Daily reports would-be oil and gas well inspectors are being lured away from the public sector by higher paying jobs with the industry, which has made it hard to fill positions and retain workers at the regulatory agencies that oversee drilling.
In Pennsylvania, E&E reports the Department of Environmental Protection currently has four openings out of a staff of 87 inspectors.

The state offers higher pay than West Virginia and Texas — about $45,000 annually to start. Inspectors are on call, but overtime has not been needed often to cover emergency response, said DEP spokesman Eric Shirk.

E&E reports the job can also come with tough working conditions like extreme heat or cold and traveling to remote areas but the biggest factor for at least one inspector is the lower pay and no guarantee of being paid for overtime.

Derek Haught, an inspector for Wetzel County in West Virginia [where the starting salary for inspectors is $35,000], said the job is not nearly as labor-intensive as some of his previous jobs in the oil and gas industry.
What does hit him sometimes is the roughly 50 percent pay cut he took when he moved to the West Virginia DEP from a position as a drilling supervisor, a job that carries a mean annual wage of more than $80,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“You always see everyone out there making the money, and you kind of get that urge … but you just gotta weigh the pros,” Haught said.

But a former Pennsylvania DEP staffer tells E&E that sometimes there are advantages to working in the public sector.

Jim Erb, administrator of the State Review of Oil & Natural Gas Environmental Regulations [STRONGER Inc.], said he has noticed that inspector positions can be attractive to people with children and families. While industry requires workers to relocate to rig sites, inspectors generally work where they live.
“There is a time in the life of a person working in oil and gas where they’re raising a family and want regular hours and less travel,” said Erb, who served 20 years as the director of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Oil and Gas Management. In that post, he said, he had a lot of success hiring inspectors who were at that point in their lives and careers.
In exchange for time with family, “sometimes they’re willing to take less” money, Erb said.

STRONGER’s most recent review of the Pennsylvania DEP noted that although the agency has increased its staff significantly in recent years, “certain sections of DEP’s Oil and Gas Bureau remain understaffed.”

Editor's Picks