In the past, many of us have seen the other side of this coin, when the oil price crashed, which literally, over night, left hundreds of skilled oil and gas workers sat at home wondering where their next pay cheque was coming from.

Now, on the flip side of that coin, we find ourselves in a situation where we are already dangerously short of suitably skilled personnel and have been so, for the past 18 months or more, yet 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 vessels, right 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 builds, including drilling rigs, there 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 involved, from the big fish at the top of the food chain such as the operators, through to the minnows at the bottom of the food chain, such as the recruitment agencies, working together to come up with a solution to the problem.

In the past, one possible solution would have been to look at utilising the skills of personnel from countries such as India or Malaysia, but with the world’s ever growing demand for fossil fuels, these countries are now becoming the new frontiers for supplying fossil fuels. Therefore the countries that were seen as a potential solution to the problem, are now up there with the rest of the world trying to attract the skilled people, rather than offering them for export as they have in the past. This squeezes what is already a tight market.

Maris Subsea, suppliers of specialist personnel to the subsea and marine markets, both in the UK and worldwide, covering such disciplines as hydrographic personnel, ROV personnel, as well as a wide array of representatives and consultants, cannot say it has the optimum solution to this problem, but with its knowledge and commitment to the industry, it is working hard to find the solutions to bring its clients the skilled personnel they need, both in the short term and the long term and for both the clients ad hoc and permanent requirements.l

Enter 7 at www.engineerlive.com/ihss

Barrie Youds is Operations Director, Maris Subsea, part of the Global Energy Group, Aberdeen, Scotland.

www.marissubsea.com