The average age of the oil and gas workforce is now 48, and the under-35s form the lowest proportion of workers.

To make matters worse, Australia's record low levels of unemployment are leading to fierce competition with other industries for skilled workers.

And then there's the fact that the oil and gas industry has an image problem in the minds of young people, thanks to graphic media reports of oil spills and environmental damage in other parts of the world, which makes it hard to attract students who would otherwise study petroleum engineering and other much-needed professions.

It all adds up to a huge headache for companies wanting to push ahead with a logjam of exploration and production projects in Australia.

What makes matters worse is that many oil and gas industry workers plan to retire early.

A staggering 50% of the workforce is expected to retire within the next five years, according to APPEA director NT, people and security Don Sanders.

"They can because they've been well paid and they can retire in their early 50s," he said.

Sanders said the industry now has its shoulder to wheel in an attempt to address these grave workforce shortages, and the sustainable nature of the current growth phase in oil and gas was helping to turn the problem around.

The boom-and-bust cycles that characterised the industry in the past had caught out many workers, who faced mass redundancies in the down times.

Young people thinking of joining the industry may have been turned off by these stories from their parents' generation, he said.

"I've heard of young people saying their parent was a geologist and when there was a downturn he drove a taxi for five years," he said.

"But we're not in that boom and bust cycle now. We have high energy demand that's sustainable going forward."

But there is still a lot of work to be done.

While ongoing steady growth has boosted confidence that the industry can be a reliable employer, it has only resulted in a slight upturn in graduates seeking careers in upstream oil and gas.

Because of this, employers must change the workplace so they can lure retired professionals back into a semi-retired role as mentors to younger workers.

"It's about retaining mature-aged workers under a different model where they can work a couple of days a week and mentor young people coming into the industry," Sanders said.

Semi-retired workers with management skills could also be retained in coaching roles or "jobs that require intuitive relationship skills", he said.

This approach has been already been used successfully by companies in other industries facing unprecedented growth.

Overturning the gender imbalance in the industry was another way of addressing the workforce shortage, he said.

The male to female ratio of oil and gas workers is about 80:20, when it is about even in the rest of the workforce.

"We believe lots of women would enter the industry, or return to it after having a family, if we made allowances for them," he said.

"Most mums take their kids to school and they would like to work school hours and have the holidays off, and we would like to bring them back into the workforce by offering these sorts of hours."

Another under-used resource is indigenous people, who often live in remote areas close to oil and gas operations. In the past, they have filled unskilled jobs, if any at all, when they could be given more training to take up much-needed jobs such as plant operators.

Twenty students were being trained as plant operators at ACEP, and more indigenous training programs were being planned for Darwin, South Australia and Queensland.

Other skilled tradesmen could be lured into the industry by offering quick courses to bring them up to speed. An example of this is an electrician, who could be employed in process operations with a 10-week course and on-the-job training.

But even if the industry took all these measures, Australia would still be short of oil and gas industry workers.

Therefore, overseas skilled migrants are going to be a necessity for the viability of the industry, Sanders said.

He said there was not one place in the world with "500 trained engineers ready to come to Australia", so it would be a case of attracting professionals from a range of countries.

Australia's high rates of pay and its outstanding safety record meant that overseas trained workers did not face any threat of exploitation here, according to Sanders.

"In our industry, we pay well above the standard rate, making it a great time for employees," he said.

In fact, the current boom, coupled with rising oil prices, might just be enough of a lure to attract young, old, female and foreign workers into the sector.

And while there may be many other competing jobs in retail, hospitality and service industries, they don't pay as well as the oil and gas industry.

"You can start out on salaries above $100,000, and be earning monopoly money once you're fully qualified,'' he said.

Another way to source more workers is to expand the fly-in, fly-out option to more parts of the country.

Enough workers were found living in the small Western Australian town of Busselton, 250km southwest of Perth, for Rio Tinto to start a FIFO service from Busselton airport to the Pilbara.

More of these arrangements would help net those Australians wanting to live in lifestyle towns, but still looking for well-paid careers, Sanders said.

APPEA 2008 will survey issues related to recruitment, skills and training.

The skills, education and training concurrent sessions will be held on Monday, April 7, at 2pm.

Topics covered include: The behavioural approach to staff attraction, retention and development, presented by Acergy's S Hannay; In search of labour - Australia's thirst for talent, presented by KPMG Migration Services partner Jason Berry; and Training the next generation of process workers, presented by Australian Centre for Energy and Process Training project director Rob Meecham.