I’ve had a proto-post sitting in the archive of this place for so long that the rest of the coven have read it and I can’t think of a way to finish it without coming across badly. I’m vain that way, what can I say. So I’m scrapping it along with most of the rest. I grow more sanguine about my personal circumstances which are fairly plush in all honesty, while my tarot cards increasingly show the world on fire inside of a decade. There was a big bit in the FT today about global nomads, I’ve already been told that I’m seen as a ‘child of the world’ - and guess what, its only an accelerating trend.

The guts of the industry is going to retire in the next decade - half of the core engineers are coming eligible for retirement in the next decade. Just as *everyone* is saying that things are going to get more difficult, all the experienced people, geologists who learned their trade going ‘elbow-to-elbow’ over a core, are going to retire on their final salary pensions and dissappear. There is a demographic hole in the oil industry in the 30-40 age band that gives us a double-normal distribution. ‘Cluster-fuck’ isn’t even starting to describe it.

Anyway, I fully expect that just as the shit really hits (but at a point when it would still be eminently salvable with a bit of savvy, lashings of cash and a bit of international cop-on) its going to turn into a quasimercantilism revival. And you know what, the fact that I can get along with even the most horrible fools, people who make my pulse rise and my skin crawl is going to keep me in business. Its going to involve talking people back to their desks and trying to get young guns to go to warzones. Not ‘risky business’ like our new projects near Mosul, Iraq (ho ho) but genuine ‘contested by people with access to airpower’ shooting galleries.

*shrug*

Shell just unveiled their new scenarios, they say 2015 as the deadline for our shit to be together or people start dying. Mostly dark-skinned people, in countries far from ‘the Free world’ so I’m quite cynical about the amount of hardship people will take in a recession to either choke down on climate change or build up alternate energy.

Someone I hold with less esteem then our useless other cat made the point of why would someone with our (shared) job description comment on this information or put it out on the web? Well, because me saying it isn’t going to make people sit up and take heed when the whole issue is floating so far down societal denial it can see Sudan. Also, because of the whole ‘for evil to triumph… good men doing nothing’ thing and finally, because if certain people say things, you can be almost certain that the path of truth and light is the other direction.

My own tea-leaf reading put zero hour at 2017. My first tour overseas should start in autumn and I can see my third in 2014 being in someplace grim, with a large chunk of senior support having evaporated, working on behalf of a national oil company (their territory, our tech) while disgruntled third parties stick their oars in. They won’t need us in positions anywhere nice - Australia, Argentina and the like have indigineous skill bases. They’ll send us to the places where the local talent has been a child soldier for the past decade instead of school, where the locals who should be doing this are dead, starved or fighting.

Its going to be pretty interesting. Anyway, I’m going to be back in Dublin for the 21st Feb, there is a Dead Flags gig that I’ll be at and then stay on for Leprecon. I test-ran the game I’m writing - D20 Future - and it seemed to be ok.

Related posts:

1. World Tilts On Axis I don't know if it made a big splash where...
2. Social Darwinism for teens Today I learned about the Sprint Family Locator feature. It...
3. The Kids, They Are Our Future. This evening was the Young Enterprise Scotland regional finals dinner...
4. You must be at least this tall to hang out here My boss has commented proudly that we are a very...
5. The Business of Doing Business The Financial Times had an interesting article about MBA's -...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.