Growing numbers of Canadian students are dropping out of school and college to gain employment in the country's booming oil industry, meeting short-term demands but potentially leading to a long-term shortage of skilled professionals, official new figures show.

According to data on public education enrolment released by Statcan, just 67.9 per cent of youngsters in the oil-rich province of Alberta now graduate from high school - the lowest proportion in the whole of the country.

This represents a four per cent increase in drop-out rates since 1999 and is broadly in line with the growth of oil and gas sector, with industry experts explaining to the country's Globe and Mail that the current trend is similar to the former pattern of people dropping out of education to work in the East Coast fishing industry.

Commenting on the figures, Kathy Telfer, a spokeswoman for Alberta Education, warned that more needs to be done to ensure that new workers in all sectors have the appropriate training so as to benefit the national economy in the long-run.

Earlier this month, Petro-Canada's chief executive Ron Brenneman blamed poor-quality work from Alberta's "over-stretched" engineering industry for the current delays and cost overruns of its $2.5 billion Edmonton Refinery works.

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