I don’t know about the oil industry, but we hire plenty of PhDs. They are very able to run subprojects on their own and have a lot of background and flexibility.
In my field there is a lot less funding of academic work than their used to be. Instead you get people from industry co-authoring papers with people from academia as a way of getting access to grad students. We don’t do that, but we do do internships.
I interpreted the OP as not being about post-docs, since post-docs are mostly called post-docs. 
And if you are looking for that, you don’t look at magazine jobs.
I suppose that’s why there are different companies with different levels of work/life balance. I’m finding in my field (consulting), there are a growing number of companies that are moving away from the big firm model of travelling consultants working 100 hour weeks. But they still typically want you to have the experience of having come from an Accenture or Deloitte.
Given the option, of course I’d rather work less hours than more.
I did the temp W-2 type consulting - my job ended when the contract ran out.
Low on (absolute) security, great on flexibility.
I viewed it as “I will trade these X hours to fund my life”.
'Cause “my life” had absolutely nothing with user requirements, logical design, or anything else I charged for doing.
What doesn’t seem to have been mentioned: it’s a person who is being hired, not just a degree. Is this guy basically, for want of a better term, ‘normal’? In terms of getting along with others, fitting into a business, coping with life in general? Because no company really wants to saddle themselves with a future personnel problem.
Or maybe they will – IF they can get him at a bargain price.