Gulf States Face Lack of Qualified Citizens for Energy Jobs

As the United Arab Emirates gears up to become the first producer of nuclear power in the Arab Gulf region and Saudi Arabia starts exploratory drilling of shale and other unconventional gas reserves, one of the biggest challenges facing the energy-exporting Gulf states is finding enough trained staff members for these novel projects — and for their conventional oil and gas industries, too.

The problem is all the more acute because Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman have all set targets for raising employment levels among their citizens and limiting the number of expatriate and migrant workers, under plans that have gained urgency because of the Arab Spring.

The political upheaval sweeping the Arab world has pushed Gulf governments to offer more jobs and better benefits and salaries to their citizens, to head off discontent among a growing number of young people without work.

Unfortunately, however, the young mostly do not have the qualifications needed for work in the energy sector.

According to Hays’ Oil & Gas Global Salary Guide 2013, expatriates make up 86.4 percent of the energy industry work force in the Middle East, the highest percentage anywhere in the world.

“If you were to take all students studying in these countries or externally and bring them back tomorrow to fill these jobs, they still couldn’t do it,” said Raj Sharma, a regional director based in Dubai at the specialist energy industry recruiting firm Hays, which published the report. “The numbers are not enough — and more importantly, they are fresh graduates that are going to need three to four years of training.”

“Governments need to be a little bit modest with the timetable they set” for phasing out expatriate and migrant labor, Mr. Sharma said.

The Gulf region suffers from a dearth of universities, research and development centers and training institutes that are capable of developing the specialized skills needed in the energy industry, the region’s main source of income.

Governments are trying to address the problem, building new universities and setting up scholarship programs.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, has set up new universities to supplement the work of the state-owned King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. One, the King Abdullah University for Science and Technology, is the country’s first coeducational university.

The state-owned energy firm Saudi Aramco is even going into schools to recruit future engineers through a one-year College Preparatory Program, which selects Saudi high school graduates to receive education abroad.

In the Emirates, the Petroleum Institute, an engineering college that opened in 2001, financed by Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, now has 1,200 undergraduate and graduate students, according to its Web site.

Foreign universities are also offering engineering programs in the country’s special free zones for education. The Edinburgh-based Heriot-Watt university, for example, the first to open a campus in the Dubai International Academic City, in 2005, offers masters programs in petroleum engineering, construction project management, energy and information technology.

In Qatar, the Qatar Foundation has wooed high-profile universities to the country’s Education City, including Texas A&M, which offers undergraduate degrees in chemical, electrical, mechanical and petroleum engineering and, since 2011, a master’s degree in chemical engineering.

Still, critics say, the skills taught do not always match the skills needed.

“University institutions and colleges do not address market demand and they don’t go with market flow,” said Khaled Mahdi, a chemical engineering professor at Kuwait University. “They are still providing traditional programs.”

To fill the gap, national oil companies have built in-house training centers, set up partnerships with specialized oil service companies and sent students abroad for education and training.

For example, Saudi Aramco is offering more than 350 courses to more than 5,000 participants this year at its Upstream Professional Development Center, set up in 2011. It also has an Unconventional Gas Resources training program that sends professionals for instruction in the United States.

Despite these efforts, the region remains heavily dependent on experienced expatriates, both to teach in the universities and company schools and to manage the implementation of the new wave of energy diversification projects.

New York Times Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/world/middleeast/gulf-states-face-lack-of-qualified-citizens-for-energy-jobs.html?_r=0