Three ways Europe’s oil and gas industry can adapt to the ‘silver tsunami’. By Adrian Park
Can European economies grow when their workforce shrinks? Across all industries, the question could be a defining one for the next decade. Today, Europe is the only continent experiencing a decline in its working-age population. It is expected to decrease by five percent by 2033, as larger cohorts of workers retire than enter the workforce.
Few sectors illustrate the challenge as clearly as the oil and gas industry. Globally, one in five of its employees is over 55, according to the 2025 Global Energy Talent Index. A survey by Hexagon found that two-thirds of industry executives already experience a ‘strong’ or ‘severe’ impact from retirements and departures.
But the sector is also caught in a difficult position. Current economic uncertainty and persistent skill shortages limit its capacity to hire in large numbers. At the same time, the industry already lost 700,000 workers during the previous slowdown (2015–2022) and it now risks a significant loss of institutional knowledge, with implications for safety and performance.
To address this, leading companies are investing heavily to capture operational knowledge. They also apply technologies, such as digital twins and artificial intelligence, that can help them to do more with less – or do more remotely.
Capturing institutional and informal knowledge
On the first front, companies with a large share of employees nearing retirement are acting quickly to preserve operational knowledge.
Consider the Crossbridge Energy Refinery, one of Denmark’s largest. To address the knowledge retention risks posed by a retiring workforce, the company adopted a ‘Connected Worker\ vision with a strong emphasis on digitizing procedures and ensuring that they reflect the actual work being performed.
The system is bidirectional – meaning that operators can now provide feedback while in the flow of work, so that procedures remain relevant and up to date. This also ensures that process knowledge is adequately documented, rather than being memorized by veteran employees.
Beyond the example of procedures, there is a strong incentive for companies facing skill gaps and workforce challenges to identify and digitize key operational processes where information is exchanged, sometimes orally or informally – for example, shift handovers.
Knowledge transfer
A crucial second step, after knowledge retention, is knowledge transfer: imparting that knowledge to raise the level of competence of the ‘five-year’ average employee to that of a ‘20-year’ veteran, making best use of available resources.
Artificial intelligence plays a significant role in this shift. Chatbots and other conversational tools are already integrated into digital twins and maintenance platforms, providing process guidance and access to asset data and documentation.
However, the sector still has a long way to go. As of 2024, only 24 percent of oil and gas employees reported using AI in their jobs, and 15 percent generative AI specifically. However, in line with the general population’s appetite for these tools, the sector’s workforce was eager to see them adopted: 71 percent of employees believed AI could make them more productive.
Leveraging technology to reduce on-site tasks
Lastly, companies have a strong interest in reconsidering which tasks need to be performed on-site and which could be done remotely.
Recent advances in imaging technologies, such as drones and handheld laser scanning, have helped extend the scope of tasks that can be performed by providing remote workers with a precise picture of the machinery and layout of the site, along with direct access to maintenance history and technical documentation.
These technological advances mean that facilities can be monitored from thousands of miles away and some processes, such as line walks, performed entirely remotely. This perspective is particularly attractive to oil and gas companies, whose sites can be remote and spread across a large territory.
Using imaging technologies like laser scanning data and a digital twin that housed all operational data and documents, Harbour Energy, the largest British North Sea leading North Sea oil and gas producer, was thus able to conduct certain inspections and line walks entirely remotely from India.
This reconsideration will lead to leaner industrial facilities but also to smarter ones. For example, shifting from reactive maintenance interventions to predictive ones prompted by automated data analyses has been shown to drive productivity gains of up to 25 percent according to Deloitte, a consultancy.
Such strategies are part of a broader reconsideration, spurred by the pandemic, of tasks that are unnecessarily labor-intensive. The decline of Europe’s working-age population will accelerate this trend, giving companies that have optimized their operations for leaner, distributed teams and effective knowledge transfer an edge.
Adrian Park
Adrian Park is Vice President, Pre-Sales EMIA at Hexagon Asset Lifecycle Intelligence. Hexagon’s Asset Lifecycle Intelligence division helps clients design, construct and operate more profitable, safe and sustainable industrial facilities. Hexagon empowers customers to unlock data, accelerate industrial project modernization and digital maturity, increase productivity and move the sustainability needle.