Manpower crunch mars offshore rigs

MUMBAI: “Sixty-three new rigs will be employed globally for exploration and production activities by 2009, but skilled human resources to man them is not available,” said V K Sibal, director general, hydrocarbons, in a recent press conference.

Sibal’s concern over the shortage of manpower in the offshore industry has been reiterated globally as well.

Owing to the offshore activities stepping up internationally, it has been estimated that 50,000 skilled offshore workers would be required in the next ten years.

Closer home, drilling contactors in India, the Far East and the Pacific Rim are likely to require over 3,000 new starts in the next two years.

In India, in addition to the 45 existing active rigs, 5-6 will be added and would need about 1,000 skilled workers in the next two years. The country currently has over 10,000 people employed in drilling services.

To make matters worse, the average employee working in this industry will reach the retirement age of 55 years in 2-6 years.

N Ramesh, director and chief executive officer, Essar Oilfield Services Ltd, said, “The shortage is more so because of movement of manpower from India to overseas, which at certain stages cannot be restricted.”

In the wake of this critical situation, offshore manning and support services provider OCS Services (India) Pvt Ltd has launched India’ first drilling and well service technology certification program for students looking for a career in oil and gas sector. The initiative is in association with international training & certification institutes like Norwegian Drilling Academy, Scotland-based Caledonia Training & Consultancy Ltd and Tolani Maritime Institute, Pune.

The six-month program would source technical expertise from the Norwegian and Caledonia institutes, while TMI would provide the infrastructure and safety training. The institute would train 40 candidates initially and then scale up to 200 students in a year’s time.

Although the numbers are small, a senior official from state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) feels, “If they can add even some trained workers in a given time frame, it will be an aid to the industry.”

Currently, there are no institutes in India providing the basic drilling training, except for an advanced training course by ONGC. Hence, Indians workers on rigs are untrained and learn drilling and well service skills on the job. This also restricts their promotion to the higher ranks, which are held by Norwegians and other trained foreigners.

Here, the new certification program aims at enabling the workers to scale up their skills and rise on the cadre. “Our students will be able to fill up some gap of the manpower demand-supply in this sector, with upward scalability,” said Raj Razdan, provost, TMI.

Owing to the dire need, OCS, which will be the marketing and placement partner in the consortium, is confident that the institute will provide 100% job placements to the students. Raje Shete, chairman, OCS said, “We have received verbal confirmation from many Indian and overseas companies that are willing to pick up all the 40 students as they graduate.”

Transocean Drilling, the world’s largest drilling company, is keen to recruit all the students. Other prospective employers such as Hercules Offshore, Essar Oilfields, Jindal Offshore, Aban Offshore, etc have also shown interest, Shete added.

However, on the question of recruitments by ONGC, the country’s largest E&P player, Shete said there were no talks as yet. “Since ONGC works on a different platform, it is unlikely that they will recruit our students, at least now,” he added.

Essar’s Ramesh feels, “This certification program should be beneficial to the drilling industry,” and added that his company would approach them in due course.