Good piece by Bloomberg highlighting how a new breed of entrepreneurs is re-shaping the “business end” of the oil & gas industry.

Surging domestic production growth, enabled primarily by innovative drilling & completion techniques, masks the turbid demographic undercurrents roiling the US oil & gas industry: 71% of the oil industry’s workforce is more than 50 years of age, reports IPAA.

As the pioneers who profitably paired horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing — along the way spurring America’s most interesting growth industry — looks toward their hard-earned retirement, the ranks of 40- and 50-somethings behind them are quite thin.

Into the breach surges a band of ‘young professionals’ who grew up with the Internet, cut their teeth in other industries, and reject “Because we’ve always done it that way” as an acceptable explanation for why the industry has failed to innovate at headquarters like it has in the oilfield.

At Oseberg, we deeply revere the veteran explorationists. They’re the folks who taught us about the power of information in the oil & gas industry, and showed us where the best information lies hiding in plain sight. As we scale our business, we do so standing on the shoulders of these industry giants.

At the same time, we empathize with the young entrepreneurs in Dallas profiled by Bloomberg. It’s time to shake things up.