Oil remains a highly strategic sector, but also one that is deeply exposed to global turbulence. Since the outbreak of hostilities on February 28, 2026, flows through the Strait of Hormuz have been disrupted, crude prices have risen sharply, and the International Energy Agency has reminded the market that this area remains central to the balance of global energy markets. In 2024, around 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption passed through this route.
In this context, much is said about supply, prices, and energy sovereignty. But another issue, less visible, deserves just as much attention: training. Behind the infrastructure, market tensions, and production requirements, it is ultimately men and women who work in high-risk environments, carrying out tasks, procedures, and decisions that leave very little room for approximation. The International Labour Organization emphasizes that oil and gas activities expose workers to major risks, and that safety training cannot be limited to simple hazard awareness alone.
In many industries, training is mainly about building skills. In oil, it is also about preventing accidents, reducing human error, strengthening prevention, and preparing teams to respond properly in critical situations. Exploration, maintenance, drilling, refining, and transport environments require a high level of technical mastery, but also an excellent understanding of risks, procedures, and interactions between roles. The ILO stresses that training programs must include not only hazard awareness, but also risk perception, prevention, and the right operational behaviors.
That is what makes this issue so sensitive. Incomplete or overly theoretical training does not simply create a skills gap. It can weaken an entire operational chain.
The second challenge is skills. The energy industry is facing an aging workforce and growing pressure on talent. In its 2025 report on energy employment, the IEA notes that not enough skilled workers are entering the pipeline to offset retirements and meet sector needs, while oil and gas jobs were among those that saw the strongest wage increases in 2025, a sign of a particularly tight labor market.
This creates a very concrete challenge in the field: subject matter experts, those who hold the experience, the reflexes, and the detailed understanding of critical situations, are also the ones with the least availability. Yet they are precisely the people who should be mentoring, correcting, transferring knowledge, and helping new profiles progress. As a result, knowledge transfer is becoming more difficult at the very moment it is most needed.
The question of attractiveness is often approached from a recruitment angle. Yet it also directly affects training. When a sector attracts fewer candidates naturally, companies must onboard more diverse profiles, sometimes people in career transition, sometimes people less familiar with industrial realities, and sometimes individuals more attentive to working conditions, safety, or the meaning they attach to their work. This requires more progressive, more educational, and better structured onboarding paths.
In other words, companies can no longer train in the same way they did ten or fifteen years ago, based on the idea that new hires would already arrive familiar with field realities. The context has changed, and training approaches must evolve with it.
Training in oil is expensive, but not only because sessions need to be funded. The real cost also includes expert time, facility availability, access constraints on certain sites, shutdowns required for some practical situations, equipment, logistics, and sometimes the impossibility of repeating certain scenarios without creating new risks.
This is often where the tension arises. Everyone knows training is necessary. But in operational reality, companies must deal with a double imperative: maintain activity while raising skill levels. The more economic or geopolitical pressure increases, the more visible this dilemma becomes. When markets tighten, when flows are disrupted, and production must remain under control, every hour of availability matters even more. In this context, training may wrongly be seen as a constraint, when it is actually a condition for resilience.
The traditional training model obviously still has value. Mentoring, on-site presence, real-life demonstrations, and learning alongside experienced teams remain essential. But they are no longer always enough to meet current constraints.
Today, companies must train faster without lowering standards. They must standardize best practices across teams and sites. They must prepare people for rare but critical situations. They must transfer knowledge without overexposing learners to dangerous environments. And they must do so in a context where expert resources are already under pressure.
This is where training becomes strategic. It is no longer simply about ensuring a “correct” skills ramp-up. It is about securing operations, making actions more reliable, preserving know-how, and reducing operational vulnerability.
Recent geopolitical tensions are a reminder of just how much pressure the oil sector remains under. But they also remind us of something else: when everything around energy becomes more strained, organizations cannot afford inadequately prepared teams.
People’s safety, operational continuity, execution quality, and knowledge transfer all depend, in one way or another, on the quality of training. And in a sector where the margin for error is small, training can no longer be treated as a peripheral issue.
It is already at the heart of the problem.
Why is training so important in the oil industry?
Because the sector combines high-risk environments, complex operations, and strict safety requirements. Strong training helps reduce errors, strengthen prevention, and improve operational control.
What is the link between geopolitics and training in the oil industry?
Geopolitical tensions increase pressure on operations, costs, and business continuity. In this context, having well-trained teams becomes even more strategic to maintain safety and performance.
What are the main training challenges in the oil sector?
The main challenges are safety, the transfer of critical skills, the sector’s attractiveness, expert availability, and the organizational cost of training.