The Drilling Supervisor Who Believed in Transferable Skills

Roxanne Kellerman—Roxy to everyone who's worked with her—spent 22 years in North Dakota's Bakken shale fields, the last eight as a drilling supervisor managing crews of up to 30 workers. She was laid off in September 2024 when her company consolidated operations. Now 44, she's six months into a renewable energy technician certificate program at a community college two hours from her home in Williston, living on savings and unemployment benefits while competing for jobs that didn't exist when she started her career.

This conversation happened over coffee at a truck stop off Highway 85, where she'd just finished an online class module on photovoltaic system installation. For legal and narrative purposes, Roxy is a composite character—though if you've spent time in the Bakken, you've met her.

You left oil and gas, or did it leave you?

Little of both. The company said "restructuring," which is corporate speak for "we're cutting bodies." We'd been hearing rumors for two years. Some guys saw it coming, got out early, took jobs in Texas or offshore. I kept thinking maybe it would stabilize. I had a good crew, good pay, benefits. Twenty-two years in, you don't just walk away from that.

Then one day in September they called us all into the office. That was that. Severance was decent—six months—but that clock runs out in March.

So renewable energy. Why did you think that would work?

She laughs, not pleasantly.

You want the honest answer? I read all these articles about how oil and gas workers have "highly transferable skills" and how the renewable sector is desperate for experienced people. There was this report from the UK saying 90% of us could move into other energy sectors.¹ I thought, okay, I've been supervising complex operations in extreme conditions for eight years. I can learn solar installation. How hard can it be?

How hard has it been?

Well, I'm learning solar installation. Whether anyone will hire me to actually do solar installation—that's a different question entirely.

Forty-seven applications since November. Three interviews. One of them, the guy basically told me I was overqualified but also underqualified, which is a neat trick. Too much experience in the wrong thing, not enough in the right thing. Another one, I could tell they thought I was too old. They didn't say it, but you can feel it. The whole vibe was "we're looking for someone who can grow with the company," which is code for "someone who's 28 and will work for peanuts."

The research talks about this gap between theoretical skills transferability and practical hiring barriers.

Yeah, well, I'm living in that gap. Here's what "transferable skills" means in practice: I know how to manage safety protocols, coordinate complex logistics, troubleshoot technical problems under pressure, lead teams in difficult conditions. All of that is true. All of that is useless when the job posting says "2-3 years solar installation experience required" and I'm competing against 500 other people who actually have that.²

And here's what nobody talks about—half those 500 people are former federal workers who just got laid off and are flooding into anything climate-related. I'm not just competing with other oil and gas workers doing the same transition. I'm competing with people who have master's degrees in environmental science and five years at the EPA. For entry-level installation jobs. Entry-level.

That must be—

Infuriating? Yeah. You know what's really infuriating? Being told for years that you're part of the problem, that your industry is killing the planet—which, fine, I'm not arguing that—and then when you actually try to be part of the solution, you find out there's no room for you.

She stirs her coffee, which has gone cold.

I had a career coach tell me I should "consider adjacent opportunities in the energy sector" like maybe natural gas or carbon capture. And I'm thinking, lady, I'm trying to get out of fossil fuels, not sideways into a different flavor of the same thing. But she might be right. Those are the only places that actually want someone with my experience.

Are you considering that? Going sideways instead of out?

Every day. Every single day. I've got a daughter who's 16. I've got a mortgage. I've got a lot of pride wrapped up in being good at my job, and I was good at my job. Really good.

And now I'm 44 years old taking online classes with kids who are 22, trying to figure out if I can afford to keep doing this until something breaks my way.

The math is brutal. Unemployment runs out in March. The certificate program finishes in April. If I don't have a job by May, I'm burning through savings or going back to whatever I can find. And what I can find is probably not renewable energy.

What would actually make this transition work?

Someone willing to take a chance on me. Just one. I don't need hand-holding or lowered standards. I need someone to look at my resume and think, "Okay, she doesn't have solar experience, but she managed drilling operations in North Dakota winters, so maybe she can figure out rooftop installation in Phoenix."

“

Or maybe I need to accept that I'm in the wrong demographic for this transition. Too old, too expensive, too much baggage from the wrong industry. Maybe the energy transition is for people who are starting their careers, not people trying to salvage theirs.

That's a pretty bleak assessment.

She shrugs.

It's February in North Dakota and I'm six months unemployed. Bleak is kind of the baseline right now.

But you want to know what's funny? I actually believe in this stuff. I think we need to move away from fossil fuels. I think renewable energy is important. I'm not doing this because I'm some kind of climate convert. I'm doing it because I need a job and this is supposed to be where the jobs are.

Except they're not. Or they are, but not for me.

The World Bank says climate resilience investments could create 150 million jobs by 2050.³ Great. Fantastic. I'll be 69 in 2050. I need a job in 2025.

What's your Plan B?

Long pause. She watches a semi pull into the lot outside.

I don't know yet. Maybe I finish this program and end up back in oil and gas because that's who'll actually hire me. Maybe I take whatever I can get and keep applying to renewable jobs on the side. Maybe I move, though that means pulling my daughter out of school and leaving the only place we've ever lived. And for what? To compete with 500 people in a different city instead of 500 people here?

The career coach told me the climate job market is taking an "emotional toll on the entire community."⁴ Which is true, but also kind of hilarious because "emotional toll" is what you say when you don't want to say "people are desperate and scared and angry."

I'm all three.

Do you regret trying to make this transition?

Ask me in six months.

Right now I'm in this weird limbo where I don't regret trying, but I'm starting to regret believing it would work. Those are different things. I thought I was being smart, getting ahead of the curve, retraining while I still had some runway. Turns out maybe I should have just taken the first oil and gas job I could find and stopped trying to be part of the solution.

She checks her phone.

I've got another class module starting in 20 minutes. Solar thermal systems. I'm going to learn all about it, and then I'm going to apply to more jobs, and probably 46 of them won't even send me a rejection email.

“

But you never know. Maybe number 48 is the one.