Three Scottish energy and utilities firms will create 100 jobs between them, with a report from Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets suggesting the sector could create thousands of jobs in the sector over the next few years.

Oil & gas maintenance provider XPD8 will create 20 new jobs in the next 12 months, services provider PD&MS Energy will create 50-60 jobs over the next year and oil & gas rig telecommunications provider Nessco will make around 20 hires in the coming months.

The Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets report ‘Oil and Gas: Rising Fortunes’ released earlier this week found that 87% of firms in the sector were on track for growth in the next two years.

A spokesperson for XPD8 confirmed to Recruiter that the firm does all its recruitment through OIE Services, which is owned by XPD8’s managing director Mark Cavanagh, and that its current drive would see it looking for maintenance engineers including project managers and graduate engineers.

PD&MS Energy’s business development manager, Garron Lees, told Recruiter the new roles for engineering personnel would come “across all the disciplines” of the business.

Lees added that the firm generally recruits directly, “but we do go to agencies from time to time”.

Lees admitted that there was some degree of talent shortage in the sector, saying it is “not always easy to find people” with the necessary skills, but adds that the company does get a good response to vacancies, saying “we’re very lucky that the work we’re doing is very interesting”.

According to Herald Scotland, Nessco’s recruitment drive comes on the back of a number of contract wins, with the firm likely to double its turnover to £34m in the year to March 2012.

Meanwhile, a report from IHS Global Insight suggests that producing natural gas from shale could support 870,000 jobs in the US over the next four years, reports Bloomberg News.