Women – the hidden potential of oil and gas industry’s energy transition

The oil and gas industry has historically been a hard place for female workers. Now, with the oil and gas industry transitioning towards green energy, women workers could be the fresh workforce injection companies desperately need.

One of the aspects of the oil and gas industries people rarely focus on is the work female workers do in the industry.

Here we will take a deep dive into the world of women in the oil and gas industry and all its aspects – the good (and the phenomenal), the bad, and the ugly – in not that specific order.

Unfortunately, we must start with the ugly, sift through the bad and see how it could get better. Then we will focus on the good and a little bit of the fantastic as well.

So, our starting point is the most recent case of the ugly – a sexual harassment lawsuit that involved oilfield services company Schlumberger.

In late July, a woman who once worked for oilfield services giant Schlumberger filed a $100 million lawsuit against the company for alleged sexual harassment, sex discrimination, and physical danger.

Former Schlumberger employee Sara Saidman stated in the lawsuit that the company turns “a blind eye to the pattern of sexual harassment, sex (gender) discrimination, and physical danger that women are subjected to” while working on oil rigs.

The lawsuit claimed that women who work on rigs are required to share living quarters — or a bedroom — with men who work on the rig, “creating an environment that invites harassment and discrimination of women“.

Allegations stated that formal complaints of discrimination or harassment are ignored or dismissed as “oil field talk” or “a joke“. Saidman also claimed that male colleagues with whom she shared a trailer and bedroom on one site allegedly encouraged other men who worked on the rig to break into her room at night and ignore if she did not consent to sexual activity.

The lawsuit also alleged other instances of sexist comments, one instance in which she was groped, and other negative events.

It is worth noting that the lawsuit also included many nonspecific accounts from other unnamed women who worked for Schlumberger and alleged similar behaviour from colleagues and superiors.

The lawsuit asked the court to certify the case as a class-action lawsuit to represent all women who served or currently serve as nonmanagerial employees of Schlumberger in the field at rigs in the United States.

Since news broke out several years ago that Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein had been sexually harassing and assaulting women in the movie industry for decades, millions of women shared their stories through the #MeToo movement.

On one hand, oil and energy companies received surprisingly little scrutiny in the #MeToo era. This is mostly due to the unknown scale of the problem. For example, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said their rules bar releasing the number of gender discrimination and harassment complaints filed against specific refineries.

On the other hand, according to a December 2018 study by the University of Massachusetts, the oil and gas extraction industry had the highest rate of sexual harassment charges of any industry.

The study was based on over 46,000 sexual harassment charges filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission between 2012 and 2016.

Before Sara Saidman filed her lawsuit against Schlumberger some other big named were taken to court. Namely, Ciara Newton sued Shell following months of harassment, including sexist comments from supervisors and a lewd sticker.

Some other names like Shari Lawton, an employee at Tesoro, said she was asked for sexual favours by co-workers, one of whom exposed himself to her at work. After she reported this behaviour, things only got worse.

ExxonMobil’s Amy Phillips, a lesbian and the only woman on her crew, repeatedly found hateful graffiti about her on refinery equipment. As in the previous case, a complaint made it only worse.

Another Shell’s former employee, Sheila Babot was told, if there was a spill, she should take off all her clothes and use the safety shower in front of the team. According to Babot, she was fired after complaining. The company blamed it on poor performance.

One could not help but notice a pattern of harassment of women in the industry, some of which are speaking out and suing. The epilogue is mostly worse treatment after a complaint and eventual departure from the company – or being fired.

But even though the start of the piece is grim, we promise it will get better from here.

In research conducted by management consulting firm McKinsey, companies that have a significant share of female leaders outperform their peers.

This statement is important since the oil and gas industry, in general, has struggled to attract, retain, and promote women. And attracting women is not the only problem as the industry faces an ageing workforce and it is losing the appeal it once had regardless of the need for new kinds of skills like advanced analytics, machine learning, and robotics.

To put it more into perspective, a decade ago, oil and gas was the 14^th most attractive employer among engineering and IT students. It dropped considerably and currently varies between the 35^th and 40^th most attractive employer.

As any industry that is in a major need for talent, it is critical to deepen and diversify its pool. One obvious and self-imposing way to do it is to bring in more talented women. But the industry has much ground to make up as women comprise only around 15 per cent of the oil and gas workforce.

This figure is according to a 2018 Gender Diversity Study made by the Petroleum Equipment & Services Association – and it has not changed much until now. Especially with the lack of hiring – and many job cuts – due to the coronavirus pandemic taking over for the past eight months.

In its research, McKinsey analysed data from 250 companies apart from its previous 2018 Women in the Workplace report.

The main conclusion of both is that, when the need for new types of talent is great and the competition for it is intense, oil and gas companies are failing to retain many of the comparatively few women they attract in the first place. For example – half of the 250 companies surveyed don’t have a single woman in top management, another third only one.

Previous McKinsey research, found that companies in the top quartile for women leaders are 15 per cent more likely to have above–industry average financial returns. The research does note that no causal connection can be proved, it observes that the correlation suggests “that when companies commit themselves to diverse leadership, they are more successful”.

Untapped female talent is not unique to oil and gas. But, when compared with 18 other industries, it was last in female participation at entry-level and second to last in the C-suite (CEO, COO, CFO, CIO). When compared with other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) industries, it ranked last.

McKinsey stated that only a third of entry-level employees in the industry are female, compared with 41 per cent across other STEM industries and 48 per cent for the entire corporate sector.

There is the fact that women account for only a small share of graduates in relevant majors, such as mechanical engineering (13.9 per cent) and petroleum engineering (17.1 per cent).

That likely affects the number who take up entry-level positions. In other STEM fields, women account for 35 per cent of graduates (and 57 per cent of all college graduates).

But that difference at the beginning doesn’t explain why, at every subsequent stage of the oil and gas pipeline, the percentage of women declines, and at faster rates than in other industries.

Four years ago, 22 oil and gas companies released, via the World Economic Forum, a “call to action” to close the gender gap, which included a promise to reach “diversity goals and objectives”.

The list includes major players of the industry like BP, Eni, Pemex, Repsol, Shell, Saudi Aramco, Total, and Equinor (then Statoil).

Following the call to action, Pink Petro – a global community of energy leaders committed to creating an inclusive future for energy –assembled stakeholders to discuss what specific steps could help bring these goals to fruition.

Pink Petro produced a report listing recommendations, which range from sponsorship, mentoring and coaching programs to recruitment and retention metrics, support for affinity networks, outreach to the STEM community, and more.

But there also is a specific reason for a more inclusive approach to hiring women in the energy industry. And it has to do with the energy transition.

BP, Shell, Equinor, and others have taken steps to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Some, like BP, made bold statements by vowing to “help the world get to net-zero” and make drastic organisational changes to make all this happen.

Also, worth noting is the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, which will spend over $1 billion and work with the World Economic Forum to collaboratively advance technological solutions and to catalyse meaningful action and coordination on climate change.

But how does this directly tie in with the inclusiveness of women in the oil and gas industry? Well, it does not directly, but rather shows a pattern of women being represented far better in the renewables industry.

Numerous studies show that gender equality increases innovation. One found “a positive relationship between the gender diversity scores of new venture teams – reflecting the increased presence of women – and the innovation performance of new ventures”. Another found that “gender diversity in R&D teams can promote innovation efficiency by providing informational and social benefits throughout the innovation process”.

And it is obvious the oil and gas industry is lagging – and lagging hard. We previously noted that women are represented in only 15 per cent of the workforce. If we add mining to the mix, a relatively similar industry, the number rises to just 22 per cent.

On the other hand, IRENA – the International Renewable Energy Agency – said in 2019 that women make up 32 per cent of the renewable energy workforce. A notable increase from oil and gas’ 15 per cent.

Obviously, cleaner energy industries attract more female workers – and it is there where probably the answer lies. The transition of oil and gas companies to energy companies and the move from fossil fuels to green energy where the most likely increase of the female workforce can be achieved. But it is not only there.

Apart from the initiatives that were set by the energy players, with not much to show for it, other initiatives are giving their all to push women into the mix. Not just at entry-level, but at the very top.

Such an initiative is the adeptly named “30% Club” which is attempting to achieve at least 30 per cent representation of all women on all boards and C-suites globally.

In other words, the 30% Club is a global campaign led by chairs and CEOs taking action to increase gender diversity at board and senior management levels.

And it’s working. Namely, in the fall of last year, the FTSE 350 could state that a third of board positions were filled by women for the first time since the London Stock Exchange was established in 1571.

If we compare that number to the number of board positions or C-suite roles held by women in the oil and gas industry – it is quite a different story.

Although we must note that the share of women on boards of oil and gas companies reached 14 per cent in 2019, double the level in 2009, according to an S&P Global report.

But with fewer than one female board member out of every five, the sector is ill-positioned to reap the gains that diversity can bring.

S&P Global also claimed that the board of BP is 36 per cent female although its executive team is still just 15 per cent female. At Shell, women made up 45 per cent of the board at the end of 2018, up from 8 per cent in 2011 – a solid rise if there ever was any.

Majors like Chevron and BP each set goals to have at least 30 per cent of women in leadership roles while Equinor set a goal to increase it’s the number of women in their leadership from 35 to 50 per cent.

Also, in 2019, PESA encouraged its member companies to increase women in leadership from 16 per cent to 20 per cent by 2020. The problem remains the pandemic, and the somewhat status quo for reaching any company goals set for 2020, so we might have to wait another year for that.

All of this does show promise for both entry-level women, and any ladies aspiring to take the reigns of a major oil and gas firm.

But we would be remiss if we wouldn’t focus on those already there. Those who grabbed the brass ring of corporate leadership and did not let go.

As we have duly noted, the glass ceiling in the oil and gas industry is as thick as it gets. Tough to reach, tougher to crack but not for some ladies and they are the ones we will focus on.

One of the first names that springs to mind is Vicki Hollub. The CEO of Occidental Petroleum, simply put, shattered the oil and gas ceiling by becoming the first female CEO of a major U.S. oil firm in 2016.

Mariana Gheorghe is also another high-profile oil and gas woman and once was ranked 19^th in Fortune magazine’s 2014 list of most powerful women in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. A small feat, that is not.

She was the first female CEO of Romanian oil and gas group Petrom and held that role 2006 to 2018, and following her departure from the company she sits on the boards of multinational banking major ING and ContourGroup.

A Shell name, Ceri Powell, also appears on this makeshift list as its former global head of exploration and current managing director of Brunei Shell Petroleum. According to Fortune magazine, Powell in 2013 became the highest-ranking female executive at Shell when she took charge of the group’s global exploration. She, like Gheorghe, was listed on Fortunes list of most powerful women. Twice.

A name worth mentioning, which at a certain point in time stood alone in the “boys club” of CEOs is Katherine Roe. When she was initially appointed as the interim CEO of Wentworth Resources, she was the sole female CEO of a listed E&P company in the world.

Now she is the permanent CEO of the firm which she joined from the board of Faroe Petroleum following the acquisition by DNO in 2019.

There, of course, are other examples – some bright and shiny both inside and out and yet some epic milestones achieved by a woman get tarnished like in the case of Diezani Alison-Madueke – the first female president of OPEC and Nigeria’s former minister of petroleum resources.

Following her time as minister and OPEC leader she was responsible for $20 billion missing from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) under her management. The court case over this has not yet been brought to its finale.

But it is understandable that like with men running things – corruption and so-called “bad apples” will occur all the time (Google for “Lava Jato” for those in need of convincing). Although, that must not take away from the momentous achievements of women in an industry which, as we have seen, is not so welcoming.

We have seen that not everything is rosy in the world of female oil and gas. Sometimes it’s the opposite. But here is some food for thought. Shell, Chevron, and ExxonMobil have been included in Forbes and Statista’s America’s Best Employers for Women 2019 list.

Petroleum refiner Valero Energy and Marathon also made the 2019 rankings in a list that included a total of 300 companies. A commendable feat by all. 

Also, in 2019, Shell and BP were included in the Times Top 50 Employers for Women 2019 list. The list is the UK’s well-established listing of employers leading the way on workplace gender equality.

An obvious sign that things are improving for women is the fact that there were no oil and gas companies on any of the lists in 2018 and that only Shell appeared on them in 2017.

With the measures, initiatives, and organisations backing women in the industry, and the renewables industry and the energy transition attracting more and more female workers, we could say that it is looking bright(er) for the ladies in oil and gas.

And why not even hope that, when the time comes, the names of Bernard Looney, Ben van Beurden, Patrick Pouyanné, or Darren Woods will be removed from the doors labelled “CEO” with a Vicki Hollub, a Taelo Mojapelo or some other woman running things from the corner office.