AI exposure: Roustabouts, Oil and Gas
Assemble or repair oil field equipment using hand and power tools. Perform other tasks as needed.
Reading this score
computedRoustabouts, Oil and Gas is among the least exposed occupations measured, at 0.5% of weighted task load, rank 917 of 923. 98.8% of this job is work current AI systems cannot produce at all. That is not a statement about skill or value. It is a statement about what these systems can and cannot do.
What holds the line here is embodiment. Across this occupation's 13 tasks it averages 3.00 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, the work has to happen in physical space. A language model cannot move matter. Until the robotics to do this work is both good enough and cheap enough to deploy widely, capability in software does not reach it.
The most exposed thing this job does is Walk flow lines to locate leaks, at 5.4%. The least is Cut down and remove trees and brush to clear drill sites, to reduce fire hazards, and to make..., at 0.0%. A gap of 5.4% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within construction and extraction occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 5.1% across the group's 61 roles, with 57 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.
What would move this score. Of 13 tasks, 0 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 13 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 0.04 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 3.00 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.33 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.53 | 0-3 |
| Context | 0.77 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 0.92 | 0-3 |
Task by task
13 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Walk flow lines to locate leaks, using electronic detectors and by making visual inspections, and repair the leaks. | 5.4% | 7.1% | 87.5% | 3.51 | untouched |
| Unscrew or tighten pipes, casing, tubing, and pump rods, using hand and power wrenches and tongs. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.89 | untouched |
| Dismantle and repair oil field machinery, boilers, and steam engine parts, using hand tools and power tools. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.65 | untouched |
| Guide cranes to move loads about decks. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.57 | untouched |
| Lay gas and oil pipelines. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.46 | untouched |
| Bolt together pump and engine parts. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.35 | untouched |
| Move pipes to and from trucks, using truck winches and motorized lifts, or by hand. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.35 | untouched |
| Clean trucks used in the fields. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.28 | untouched |
| Dig holes, set forms, and mix and pour concrete into forms to make foundations for wood or steel derricks. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.43 | untouched |
| Supply equipment to rig floors as requested and provide assistance to roughnecks. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.26 | untouched |
| Clean up spilled oil by bailing it into barrels. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.17 | untouched |
| Dig drainage ditches around wells and storage tanks. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 2.99 | untouched |
| Cut down and remove trees and brush to clear drill sites, to reduce fire hazards, and to make way for roads to sites. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 2.85 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.