Petroleum industry jobs are only a good living if you prepare for the bust, which always comes
Perhaps there is no other topic for which I am better prepared to write commentary than the oil and gas industry.
Ask my finger, it's a bit crooked thanks to a close encounter of the steel kind while working in Alberta's oil fields. Or ask my high-school girlfriend — during a dinner in the late 1980s, her mom could not quite grasp the subtleties of me dancing around the fact that our house had been repossessed by the bank after a downturn. Or ask the hundreds of oil and gas workers who have participated in research I've undertaken.
Growing up an oilpatch brat, working in the industry, conducting long-term social science research on its impacts — I am confident saying the energy sector is not all it's cracked up to be.
Importantly, this is not commentary on the workers, families and communities that support the industry. To them, I tip my hard hat.
But after a convoy of oilpatch workers recently headed to Edmonton to counter the public environmentalism of Greta Thunberg, I felt compelled to remind people what they were defending.
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