Petrobras Confronting Extremely Tight Skilled Labor Market In Deepwater Development Push - Reuters

[hatrack]

RIO DE JANEIRO - Technological advances will help oil giant Petrobras and its foreign partners tap huge subsalt reserves off Brazil's coast, but a shortage of skilled workers and tight equipment supplies pose challenges.

High oil prices, previous under-investment in training by the energy industry, and increasingly hard-to-access reserves have driven up the cost of the complex equipment and skilled engineers needed for major oil projects. "Perhaps our single greatest hurdle lies in the hiring and training of people," said Mark Riding, the deep-water theme director for oil field services supplier Schlumberger Ltd, during a seminar at the biennial Rio Oil and Gas conference this week. "Years of under-investment in talent have led to a limited and aging pool of skilled workers."

About 35,000 people are attending the four-day conference, which is focused heavily on the newly discovered subsalt reserves off Brazil's southern coast. Petrobras has invested US$1 billion in drilling 20 wells into the subsalt layer since 2005. Analysts estimate the reserves could contain up to 80 billion barrels of oil, catapulting Brazil into the top 10 oil producers.

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Thurston noted that subsalt production was increasingly becoming the norm, with 40 percent of new discoveries in such areas.

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http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/50267/story.htm

[Vincardog]

1. Another example of why we have to make creating well paying secure jobs the #2 priority