A survey of more than 10,000 industry workers found that 54 per cent of respondents believe the government’s strategy is unsustainable despite a major planned tax cut of 62 per cent to 30 percent on shale gas production announced by George Osborne last month.
Conducted by Oilandgaspeople.com, the survey also revealed that 44 per cent of respondents believe fracking for shale gas in the UK will mean that recruiters and companies will have to pay higher wages to recruit qualified fracking staff from overseas.
Kevin Forbes, chief executive of Oilandgaspeople.com, said: “Shale gas represents a significant opportunity for the UK to meet its energy security targets, but the government needs to realise that the UK’s needs equipment, rigs and qualified staff that are in short supply.”
Forbes also noted that the push for shale gas could have consequences for the Oil and Gas Industry as a whole, with an increase in demand for staff “pushing up wages and reducing the pool of skilled oil and gas contractors still further”.
Despite this, he said it was there was still time to start training oil and gas recruits for the future due to the current high levels of unemployment throughout the country.
“It really is time companies responded to this risk and got together to address the skills shortage,” he said.
“Without the workforce shale gas projects will not be able to go ahead and the energy security will be affected. Government needs to step in and incentivise companies to invest more in people,” added Forbes.