North Central Texas College has announced a new technical degree for fall 2008 to meet the need for more trained workers in the Barnett Shale energy boom.

Energy industry representatives approached college officials a year and a half ago, said Emily Klement, dean of NCTC’s Bowie campus.

DRC/Barron Ludlum

EnCana Oil & Gas, which runs this rig in Keller, approached officials at North Cen¬tral Texas College in Bowie about helping train workers for the industry.

“They [the energy companies] are in need of employees for the new day,” Klement said. “It’s a highly technical area.”

When the 1980s oil boom went bust in Texas, the industry lost a lot of skilled employees. But even those who stayed through the lean times, bringing decades of knowledge to the latest boom, need more technology training, she said.

The program will be housed in a new 6,560-square-foot addition to the Bowie campus, paid for by money from industry partners, including $400,000 from EnCana Oil & Gas, $60,000 from Complete Production Ser­vices and $650,000 from the city of Bowie’s economic development funds. Program demand likely means many classes will soon be offered at NCTC’s Gaines­ville and Corinth campuses, too, Klement said.

The program could start with as many as 24 students, with 24 more students added each sem­ester. Some people have stepped forward as potential teachers, Klement said, but NCTC has yet to hire a coordinator. That person will help establish admission and other standards for the program, she said.

The two-year technical degree includes classes in computer applications, instrumentation, production methods and industrial safety. Because the program is governed by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board — in fact, its final approval is pending — students are required to take core academic classes.

The college also offers a 30-hour certificate program, and lifelong learning classes for those already working in the field.

In designing the program, NCTC officials gathered information from the industry.

“A lot of it is on-the-job training; that’s just mostly the way they do it,” said Doug Akins, NCTC’s dean of advanced and applied technologies.

But they also visited Western Wyoming Community College to see how that school, which is successful at turning out skilled workers, conducts its training programs.

“We heard about their best practices,” Akins said. “We’ll be able to get people a leg up” in getting a job.

According to economist Ray Perryman, in an industry-funded economic impact study of the natural gas boom, the industry provides 55,385 permanent jobs in the 14-county region of the Barnett Shale.

Additional industry estimates show that 1,177 more trained workers will be needed by 2013, NCTC officials said. Annual salaries begin at $40,000 for entry-level jobs and increase to $95,000 and higher.

Some of the work is physically demanding, especially in drilling, work-over and other well-servicing jobs. But even those workers need technical skills because logs and other reports are done on computers.

Klement said the curriculum also is designed to help a new generation of workers transfer their skills when the industry wanes or changes, such as the movement toward alternative energy.

“The next generation will be equipped to handle what’s yet to come,” Klement said. “You will have skills other generations didn’t have to be able to launch into something else.”

PEGGY HEINKEL-WOLFE can be reached at 940-566-6881. Her e-mail address is pheinkel-wolfe@dentonrc.com .