In March 2013 the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) released a study about the training and development needs of oil and gas engineers. Sponsored by BP, the global survey queried 773 oil and gas professionals across 24 countries. Its findings highlighted the daunting challenge for the industry, as half of all highly skilled professionals are expected to retire over the coming decade and the sector strives to transfer skills to a new generation.

The survey and its key findings were the topic of a panel discussion sponsored by BP and held during its “Inside Track” event at the recent Offshore Technology Conference 2013 in Houston. The event was geared for early and mid-career potential recruits, academic influencers, and college students who might be interested in learning about careers with the company.

Some of the notable findings from the survey include the fact that a lack of training and development within an organization can have a severe impact on an employee’s desire to remain employed by that company. More than half of the respondents said that a lack of training and development opportunities would cause them to consider employment elsewhere.

Also, these types of opportunities affect their decision to consider employment with a company in the first place. Training and development was highlighted as a critical factor in choosing an employer, with 75% of respondents saying it was important in their choice of position.

Additionally, many of them feel that a lack of training has a negative impact on their career development.

In many cases employees are taking responsibility for their own training and development, and in fact only 11% of the respondents expect their employer to provide all of their training, while 27% expect to do that work on their own.

This may be partly due to the fact that, according to survey respondents, there is great variability across oil and gas companies in terms of the type of training they provide. Two-thirds of the respondents noted they had received formal training in their current position, but 34% had not.

Panelists respond

The panelists at the event found many of these results to be surprising and a bit consternating. The “skills gap” is of particular concern.

“Two things contribute to the complex issue of the skills gap: the complexity of the resource plays being explored and the vast, rapidly changing portfolio of technology required to enable production,” said Don Shoultz, head of upstream learning and development for BP. “As an industry, we are working hard to address these issues in various ways, including internal learning and development initiatives and partnerships with in-country universities.”

Added Dr. Abul Jamaluddin, NExT business manager for North America and a Schlumberger flow assurance advisor, “I would define this as a nonalignment of industry needs to the formal university education. As a whole the university curriculum is evolving, but more emphasis has to be imposed on field experiences tied to university fundamental leanings. Having industrial practical training as part of the curriculum would reduce the requirement for company training when graduates start their careers.”

Another question addressed the “big crew change,” a topic that has been questioned for years but still seems to lack quantitative answers. Jamaluddin said that Schlumberger’s philosophy has always been to focus on training from the earliest stages of an employee’s career.

“We have reinforced formal employee development for [new hires], a program called the Fixed Step Program, even further,” he said. “We’ve also introduced high-intensity training for our mid-career employees.”

Shoultz added that BP focuses on development of staff as a key corporate objective, investing more than US $500 million each year in training and development. “We have created and implemented global flagship programs specifically for the development of new talent, including the Challenge Program, a global initiative for new graduate recruits in their first three years with the company,” he said. “The program maps out the first three years of an individual’s career and allows graduates to experience three different roles within the organization, providing consistent and structured learning throughout.”

BP’s eXcellence Program offers an additional seven years of training and learning that is both technical and functional and offers personal depth and increased operational capability while also ensuring that the company is able to deliver responsible operations throughout the world, he added.

BP also has invested in facilities like its upstream learning center in Houston and has established accelerated development programs (ADPs) focusing on asset-based, real-world experiences to meet immediate and pressing learning needs. “For example, at BP we run a petrophysics ADP, which develops and renews capabilities that are needed for BP’s evaluation of oil and gas resources,” Shoultz said. “The program has proven highly successful in developing ‘asset-ready’ petrophysicists who are already applying their expertise to improve BP’s productivity.”

Ultimate responsibility

So who should bear the brunt of employee development: the universities, the company, or the employee?

“Universities definitely play a key role to form alliances with companies to modify and build their curriculums to prepare their graduates to become productive sooner,” Jamaluddin said. “Government can also play a significant role in this process, especially by providing tax incentives and funding.”

He added, however, that Schlumberger bears the training and development costs of all of its employees.

According to Shoultz, the oil and gas industry has a history of being collaborative. “Our organizations partner on the overwhelming majority of global projects, and we rely on and utilize a great number of service companies to ensure the global work force remains mobile and adaptable to constant changes in their clients’ needs,” he said. “Our industry does better than many others at facilitating and encouraging learning and development across multiple organizations.

“Industry bodies like the Offshore Petroleum Industry Training Organization are becoming increasingly important in encouraging and facilitating multicompany training programs,” he added. “That said, more could and should be done. Increasing the skills and capability for the sector as a whole is without doubt a positive for the organizations operating within it.”

Industry societies such as SPE also can lend a hand, but overall any kind of standardized training will require collaboration from all of the constituents.

“Currently, there is no standard curriculum related to the oil and gas industry and related specialties/sciences for global universities, which creates some inconsistencies in the quality of graduates,” Shoultz said. “Working alongside national governments and in-country universities, BP has committed to equipping our employees with the skills and education needed to be successful for the long term.”

“This is critical for the success of the oil and gas industry,” Jamaluddin added. “The whole dynamic changes as we move from shallow water to deep water to ultra-deep water as well as unconventional oil and gas.

“The industry as a whole must move to a more standardized learning and development framework, with each organization playing a role in bridging the skills gap and crew change.”

He added that a multicompany consortium that included academia, training institutions, societies, and oil and service companies could foster this collaboration by supporting more “learning by doing” training as well as more formal, guided university-industry interactions such as the software donations that many companies make to universities to train their students on the latest workflows.

While the skills gap remains a critical concern for industry leaders like Jamaluddin and Shoultz, it appears that there are few limitations to imaginative solutions.