Black Women in the Oil & Gas Sector

Article Summary

The article ‘Minority and Female Employment in the Oil & Gas and Petrochemical Industries by HIS Global Inc.’ reports on the employment outlook for both Hispanic and African-American workers, examining the employment in the oil and gas sector by gender between 2010 and 2030. In this respect, four fundamental job opportunity types are put into consideration. These job opportunities include:

· The new jobs that will likely come as a result of the focused growth of the industries

· Opportunities that will surface as a result of retiring workers or those that will leave the industry

· Jobs that will result from the investment of capital in related sectors such as transportation and storage infrastructure

· Job opportunities that will arise from a more accelerated growth of the upstream gas and oil sector

As part of the article, the data focusing on employment by religion, ethnicity or race, and gender is presented in all the segments from the downstream to the upstream segments of the industry. The analysis of the data reveals some of the key findings associated with the subject of the report. Firstly, all the segments of the oil and gas sector in the U.S as well as the petrochemical industry created a combined employment opportunity for an estimated 1.2 million people in 2010. The upstream segment topped the ranks with the downstream segment following at 60% and 23% of the total opportunities respectively. From the total employment opportunities in the country, African-Americans held 8.2%. On the same note, Hispanic workers accounted for 15.7% of the total workers across all the four segments of the industry. Finally, women held 19% of the jobs with a higher stake in the petrochemical and downstream segments at 25%. However, their share was lower in the midstream and upstream segments at 15% and 16% respectively. After the analysis of the data and the accompanying conclusions, the author proceeds to present the projected overview of the employment following the same constructs as gender, occupation, and ethnicity or race. Correspondingly, there is a high likelihood that 1.3 million direct employment opportunities between 2010 and 2030, regardless of the types of job growth. Of all these resultant opportunities, Hispanics may account for 32% (408 thousand) of the jobs in 2030, while women will only hold 185 thousand jobs. Evidently, minority groups’ employment is projected to be on the rise from approximately 25% to 33.33% of the total job opportunities in the industry by 2030. Women will have almost as many job opportunities added in sectors such as business, management, and financial as well as the professional sectors. The current low share of women in the unskilled and semi-skilled blue-collar occupations may plummet further, which may inhibit the overall growth of female employment in the oil and gas industry in the country. Therefore, Training and interest will play a pertinent role in the suitability of women in the large number of blue-collar jobs projected to result from the industry. Additionally, while there is a huge opportunity in the Office and Administrative category, the share of women may fall instead of increasing despite the fact that the sector is traditionally female-dominated. On the same grounds, however, it is noteworthy that most of the resultant job opportunities will be blue-collar jobs (63%), thus, opening opportunities mostly for workers with post-secondary training or high school diploma. Managerial jobs may only account for 23% of the opportunities. Arguably, there will be a tremendous increase in the number of ‘minority group’ workers because of the increased opportunities in the industry with women gaining the least from the forecast period between 2010 and 2030.

Rhetorical Analysis of the Text

A proper analysis of the rhetorical strategies employed in an article commences with the identification of the fundamental aspects of the text such as the speaker, audience, and subject of the article. In that respect, the article in question was prepared by the Information Handling Services Limited (HIS Ltd.) to be used by the American Petroleum Institute (API). However, while the API is the primary audience, the general population can use the information contained in the article, especially concerning the issues of employment. Besides, the API would probably disseminate the information to the public domain to offer advice on the projected changes and their impact on employment in the sector. The immediate purpose of the article is to inform various strategies and operations of the API, especially concerning the human resource changes in the oil and gas and petrochemical industry for proper planning and efficiency to be realized. The chief subject of the article comprises the employment of the minority groups and women in the oil and gas as well as the petrochemical industries. Regarding the tone, the author has employed a neutral professional tone and careful diction largely because of the sensitivity of both the subject of the article and the characters. The neutral tone is evident in the manner in which the author discusses the employment issues related to both the minorities and female factions. The author is upbeat about the possibility of the emergence of job opportunities for all factions without favoring one faction over the other. The analysis presented exhibits a positive attitude and neutrality in the sense that the author conducts a thorough analysis of situations in all the sectors for both the minority groups and women without leaning on one end. The major impact of this article on the audience is that the audience will have the urge to read and synthesize the article because of the positive attitude of the author. It suffices to say that a neutral tone, which results in a positive attitude, also creates the same attitude on the audience concerning their perception of the text. Similarly, the author employs a careful diction throughout the text. For instance, the author has preferred the term ‘African-Americans’ to ‘Blacks’ to avoid a possible negative connotation of the contents of the text by the audience since the use of the former may send racial cues. Such a situation may degrade the credibility of the article, especially since it is meant to discuss issues of employment for the minority groups who also happen to be sensitive and subject to racism. Notably, the author has acknowledged the importance of the inclusion of the minority groups and women in Oil & Gas and Petrochemical industries but failed to acknowledge the fact that his conclusion is drawn from projections, which may contain low accuracy resulting in erratic deductions.

To create an impact on the audience, the author has employed three major rhetorical strategies (logos, ethos, and pathos) for persuasion. The three persuasive strategies play a central role in the construction of a good argument and a reliable text as they serve to reinforce the claims made in the text (Aristotle, Bizzel & Patricia, 2001). Logos is used in the text to create an appeal to the reason of the audience. It features in the use of deductive and inductive reasoning. More succinctly, inductive reasoning samples the facts and then draws vital conclusions from the representative cases. The author of the article presents the factual data of the projected job opportunities in the oil and gas as well as the petrochemical industry for the minority groups and the female population, and then draws the conclusions of the report after making a comparison. A comprehensive examination of all the categories of job opportunities within the industry is also done to inform the final conclusions. This follows Plato, Bizzel and Herzberg’s (2001) assertion that inductive reasoning must rely on a sufficient amount of facts and cases with reliable evidence. The overall conclusion that there will be a significant increase in the number of job opportunities in the industry stems from the inductive analysis of the sets of statistical data that form part of the article. Besides, the author concludes that while the gain of women will be relatively low, comprehensive policy formulation could raise women’s overall share of the job opportunities. Conversely, deductive reasoning begins with generalizations and contextualizes it into a specific case. The author of the article begins with a generalized projection of 1.3 million direct jobs in the industry between 2010 and 2030. The generalized statistics are then put into the context of the projected additional job opportunities for women and minority groups. Furthermore, the deductive reasoning relies on a large pool of data that the author has presented in the article. As part of the logos, both inductive and deductive reasoning attracts the faith of the audience in the article. Sezler (2013, p.279-307) notes that both deductive and inductive reasoning eliminates the existence of the logical fallacies in a text that may reduce its reliability in the eyes of the audience. The lack of logical fallacies in the text is the recipe for high approval of the article by the intended audience, which seems to have been the author’s primary intention.