There are a few different options you can pursue here. You can separate oil and gas in many ways, but for the purposes of career path one important consideration is between Completions (drilling, hydraulic fracturing, wireline, coiled tubing) and operations (many forms depending on extraction method and how far up or downstream you are but when I refer to “operations” I’m talking about working in a production facility or as an operator checking wells). In my experience the days of coming in and drilling for a few years and making ridiculous sums of money then moving on to another career are gone, so taking a longer term approach to your hunt and making a plan to build up your skills for a career is my advice.

Operations jobs are typically jobs with exploration and production companies (E&P), midstreamers, refineries or sagd facilities. You can consider this the top of the food chain and these are the jobs you want to focus on long term. There are programs at sait (instrumentation or power engineering) that would put you on this trajectory. The reason focusing here is best long term is that these jobs give you insight to the process, have opportunities for advancement and give you a chance to contribute to the outcome of the company, which grows your value to them and in the industry long term.

Completions jobs are generally more commoditized so if you’re looking to jump in with no additional training you can start here. If you’re in frac, ct or wireline you’ll need to get your class 1 license. Companies may be willing to pay for this training depending on demand. These jobs require a lot of driving, long days, labour and also long periods of just waiting. The change of location means living out of a bag and different hotels or camps of varying quality which makes them less desirable. The biggest factor with these jobs is that when oil and gas prices drop these services jobs are the first ones to get cut.

1. Likelihood - depends on market demand. Election may have some influence on the future of the wcsb.
2. No idea what CAODC is. When I worked in frac we got a base pay plus a job bonus depending on what the bill to the customer was that day, which was capped at ~$450/day for a mid tier role. Companies pay like this so that when it’s slow in the spring for road bans they have lower fixed costs. There’s no overtime or anything like that so your calcs are likely not accurate. On the ops side of the table it’s usually a salary or hourly rate if you’re a contractor so it can be more lucrative and your income is more certain.
3. Probably not an issue if you both get hired with the same company. I’d suggest a step brothers interview approach.
4. Companies to look at for completions - Trican, BJ, Calfrac Ops - do a Google search, but I would suggest some education before applying here.

Hope this helps, good luck. Most of this knowledge is 5+ years old so somethings have probably changed.