EXPOSED
The monitoring half of this job — reading gauges, logging pressures and flow rates, adjusting throughput to meet dispatch orders, writing shift reports — has already been centralized into SCADA control rooms, and software handles setpoint optimization better than a person watching a panel. What holds is the physical half: walking the station, isolating and packing a unit, changing filters and lube oil on reciprocating compressors, sniffing out leaks, and being the qualified body on site when a unit trips at 2 a.m. This is a small occupation (about 3,500 jobs) already thinned by remote operation; the survivors look increasingly like field technicians with an operator title.
Roughly flat across the period, with year-to-year wobble.
Median pay $66,160 → $77,320 -6.5% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
-1.3%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 3,510 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Exposed, and shrinking
Both signals point the same way: the tasks are largely automatable and the BLS projects -1.3% by 2034. This is the case where the score and the forecast agree, and it is the one worth taking seriously.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~600 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
FillerCompressorGas EngineerGas OperatorGas JourneymanPlant OperatorStation EngineerStation OperatorTerminal OperatorCompressor EngineerCompressor OperatorFill Plant OperatorNatural Gas AnalystPipeline TechnicianCorrosion TechnicianGas Booster EngineerGas Storage OperatorCompressor TechnicianGas Cylinder OperatorGas Transfer OperatorGas Cylinder ProcessorGas Compressor OperatorWireline Field OperatorAcetylene Gas Compressor
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: trust premium .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier A 9 reflects the split: the panel work — logging suction/discharge pressures, trimming recycle valves to hold a dispatch nomination, generating shift logs — is already done from a consolidated control center hundreds of miles away, while the wrench end (pulling a scrubber element, valve-and-seat changes on a recip cylinder head, blowdown and purge before a hot work permit) still needs a person on the pad, which keeps it out of the 0-6 band but nowhere near the 14+ of trades that can't be watched remotely at all.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments 14 puts you in the uncontrolled-environment band because the station is outdoors and unattended: climbing to the cooler deck in ice, gas-sniffing flanges with an LEL meter, working around a 3,000-horsepower recip running at 300 psi discharge, and driving to a remote site at night when a unit trips on high vibration — the ceiling of 20 belongs to roles with more varied terrain and less fixed plant.
Certification preferred, not legally required A 7 recognizes that you carry PHMSA Part 192 Subpart N operator qualification for each covered task, plus H2S and confined-space tickets, and an OQ card can be pulled — but nothing is licensed in your name the way a stationary engineer's boiler license or a P.E. stamp is, so the pipeline company holds the compliance exposure, not you personally.
Meaningful discretion 8 fits calls that are real but bounded — deciding to shut a unit down on rising rod-load or bearing temp rather than nursing it to the next scheduled outage, when to declare a leak an emergency versus a work order — while nomination volumes, pressure limits, and MAOP are set by dispatch and the gas control tariff, not by you.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (9/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (7/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (3/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (8/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 18 of this occupation's 41 points (44%).
Embodiment (14/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
Gas Plant Operators EXPOSED
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 54/100, still EXPOSED.
Task-mix shift is genuine here: as SCADA and setpoint optimization absorb the remaining monitoring/logging tier, what is left is field diagnosis on reciprocating units — valve and ring failures, rod packing leaks, vibration and pulsation troubleshooting, hot work permitting. If the operator title consolidates into a qualified field-tech role (as it already has at many midstream operators), the residual day is largely work current AI cannot do at usable quality.
PHMSA methane-detection and leak-survey obligations under the 2020 PIPES Act / 2024 gas gathering and leak detection rulemaking push more scheduled walk-throughs, above-ground surveys and follow-up repair verification onto site-qualified personnel; drones and fixed sensors flag but do not isolate, blind, or repack a unit.
49 CFR Part 192 Subpart N Operator Qualification requires an identified qualified individual to perform and be accountable for covered tasks. If PHMSA or a state pipeline safety program tightens OQ to bar remote/automated performance of covered tasks such as valve isolation, purging and pressure testing — or requires a named on-site qualified person to sign the lockout/tagout and hot work permit rather than a control-room operator — the shield strengthens materially.
If post-incident enforcement (NTSB/PHMSA findings after a station rupture or overpressure event) hardens the expectation that the on-site qualified operator, not the control room, owns the emergency shutdown and blowdown call, the role formally owns a consequential ambiguous decision. Union or company operating procedures granting field stop-work authority over dispatch orders would show the same shift.
The limit. No route to a trust premium: buyers are pipeline shippers and utilities who never see the operator and pay for delivered pressure, not for a human. Also note the headcount ceiling — even fully raised, this is a ~3,500-job occupation still contracting through control-room consolidation, so a higher resistance score describes fewer people.
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 100 | $79,720 +3% |
| Pittsburgh, PA | 60 | $61,190 -21% |
| Charleston, WV | 30 | $73,080 -5% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 100 | $79,720 +3% |
| Charleston, WV | 30 | $73,080 -5% |
| Pittsburgh, PA | 60 | $61,190 -21% |
We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.
That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 41. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.