$1bn boost for industrial hiring

US$1 billion (Dh3.67bn) gas project which begins this year will kick-start a wave of industrial projects across Abu Dhabi creating 5,000 jobs at its peak.

Thousands of construction jobs will be created when work on a US$1 billion (Dh3.67bn) gas project begins this year, kick-starting a wave of industrial projects across Abu Dhabi.

Abu Dhabi Gas Industries (Gasco) last week awarded contracts to build Habshan sulphur station and the Ruwais sulphur handling terminal, which will together employ about 5,000 workers at the peak of construction.

The facilities being built will make it easier for Gasco to profit from the sulphur it extracts, along with natural gas from its Shah and Habshan fields.

Dodsal Group, based in Dubai, and a consortium made up of Techint's Italian arm and Al Jaber Energy Services, based in Abu Dhabi, will plan and build plants at the sour-gas fields to convert sulphur to a granulated form and a railway system to transport it to Ruwais for export. At present, tankers transport liquid sulphur to the port.

Both projects are scheduled to be completed in three years. Oil exports represent more than a quarter of the UAE's GDP. Last month ChemaWEyaat, an Abu Dhabi chemical manufacturer, chose the UK consultancy Halcrow as its master planner for an industrial city at the Ruwais shipping centre. The project, which includes what the company hopes will be one of the world's largest benzene plants, will cost as much as $20bn to develop. Borouge, the emirate's other petrochemical firm, is moving ahead with its third expansion phase, after completing in the autumn an expansion that included a 1.5 million-tonnes-a-year ethane cracker. In a joint venture with the Austrian manufacturer Borealis, Borouge hired the German contractor Linde to conduct front-end engineering and design and the US engineering firm Bechtel to manage implementation of Borouge 3, the third expansion phase.

The construction of industrial centres for making and exporting petrochemicals such as ethylene is only the first wave of industrial growth in the UAE, said Tony Potter, the managing director at the consulting group Chemical Market Associates in Dubai.

"The next step is to try and attract converting companies who take polymers and turn it into something useful locally, instead of sending it to China," Mr Potter said.

Abu Dhabi Basic Industries Corporation is moving ahead with one such project. The maker of polymers is developing what it hopes will be the world's largest plastics conversion cluster, a 4.5-square kilometre manufacturing centre in Musaffah called Polymers Park.

In addition to an increase in front-end engineering and construction jobs, there will be long-term job growth in energy-intensive industry in the UAE.

Emirate Steel Industries announced in August that it would hire 600 workers as it expands its Musaffah plant with two rolling mills and increased capacity to manufacture steel products such as construction girders. The increase in industrial construction may compensate for a sharp decline in residential projects in the emirate.

Rana Abu Hadhoud, a former senior recruiting consultant with the employment site Bayt.com, said she had seen fewer requests from property firms.

"It's not that bad, but it is slow compared to what I used to have," Ms Abu Hadhoud said. "They don't go directly to big projects like before." Wissam Hamzeh, who heads human resources for Al Jaber Energy Services, said the company had not decided how many positions it would recruit for the Gasco project, but that hiring would increase.