In the pastmany of us have seen the other side of this coinwhen the oil price crashedwhich literallyover nightleft hundreds of skilled oil and gas workers sat at home wondering where their next pay cheque was coming from. Nowon the flip side of that coinwe find ourselves in a situation where we are already dangerously short of suitably skilled personnel and have been sofor the past 18 months or moreyet the industry has potentially 50 new vessels hitting the market over the coming two to three years. Raising the question that is on everyone’s lips: where are all the people going to come from to man these vesselsright the way from the client representatives and project managers through to the data processors and life support technicians and from the superintendents and party chiefs through to the survey engineers and ROV pilots?
It has been estimated that with all of the new buildsincluding drilling rigsthere is a potential shortage of around 5000 personnel over the coming years. No industry can cope with a shortage of people like that without it having a potentially detrimental effect on the industry’s ability to cope with world demand. There is only one way to manage such a shortage and that is simply for all the companies involvedfrom the big fish at the top of the food chain such as the operatorsthrough to the minnows at the bottom of the food chainsuch as the recruitment agenciesworking together to come up with a solution to the problem.
In the pastone possible solution would have been to look at utilising the skills of personnel from countries such as India or Malaysiabut with the world’s ever growing demand for fossil fuelsthese countries are now becoming the new frontiers for supplying fossil fuels. Therefore the countries that were seen as a potential solution to the problemare now up there with the rest of the world trying to attract the skilled peoplerather than offering them for export as they have in the past. This squeezes what is already a tight market.
Maris Subseasuppliers of specialist personnel to the subsea and marine marketsboth in the UK and worldwidecovering such disciplines as hydrographic personnelROV personnelas well as a wide array of representatives and consultantscannot say it has the optimum solution to this problembut with its knowledge and commitment to the industryit is working hard to find the solutions to bring its clients the skilled personnel they needboth in the short term and the long term and for both the clients
Enter 7 at www.engineerlive.com/ihss Barrie Youds is Operations DirectorMaris Subseapart of the Global Energy GroupAberdeenScotland.
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