On a traditional rig, dozens of workers assemble the oil pipes and carefully feed them down the well to get the oil out of the ground. Oil wells will always require some workers on-site, but robots will be doing more and more of the work, according to Eric van Oort, professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Manual labor will probably shift to maintenance rather than actually working on the rig floor and handling pipe,” he said.
Van Oort thinks opportunities in the oil and gas industry will likely favor those who understand big data analytics and machine learning, which could spell more trouble for roughnecks, those blue-collar workers who are currently the backbone of the oil and gas industry.
Link to 2020 NPR Interview is here.