San Antonio energy boom doubles oil, gas jobs

SAN ANTONIO – The number of San Antonio-area workers employed in oil-and-gas exploration, production and transportation has more than doubled since 2009 and the start of the Eagle Ford Shale energy boom.

At the end of April 2014, 9,537 people in the San Antonio-New Braunfels MSA worked in those fields, up 121 percent from the same month in 2009, according to data compiled by job-placement agency Workforce Solutions Alamo. The San Antonio metro area includes Bexar and seven surrounding counties.

At $93,607 per year, the oil-and-gas extraction industry boasted the highest annual average salary of the four categories in Workforce Solutions’ analysis, followed closely by oil-and-gas pipeline construction, which averaged $92,687 per year.

The remaining two categories — oil-and-gas support and oil-and-gas equipment manufacturing — averaged $78,244 and $59,216 respectively.

As the nearest big city to the 24-county Eagle Ford, San Antonio has benefited from its available workforce and infrastructure.

Major oilfield service companies including Halliburton and Baker Hughes have opened large campuses here, and homegrown companies including Lewis Energy Group also have drawn from the labor pool.

Read more at the San Antonio Business Journal.