Oil companies look to Emirati workers amid sector-wide skills crunch

Companies operating in the UAE find it hard to entice nationals to pursue a career in hydrocarbons. Fatima Al Marzooqi / The National

Oil firms are looking to bridge the skills gap in the industry while increasing the local workforce.

The oil and gas industry has suffered from skill shortages for more than two decades, but companies operating in the UAE find it even harder to entice nationals to pursue a career in hydrocarbons.

“UAE nationals are a smaller population with the economy growing in different sectors, creating more opportunities and competition,” said AbdulKarim Abdulla Al Mazmi, the general manager and chief representative for BP UAE.

To better understand how to tackle this problem, BP’s upstream business in the Middle East region had Oxford Strategic Consulting (OSC) conduct research on attracting Emiratis and Omanis to the sector, interviewing more than 500 people from these countries.

The British/GCC consultancy, specialised in building human capital, found that the engineering field garnered one of the top interests among high school students.

Nearly 34 per cent of them were interested in studying engineering; however, that number dropped to 11 per cent among university students. “The challenge is finding the right Emirati with the right skills,” Mr Al Mazmi said.

OSC suggests that oil and gas companies sponsor science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stems) tutoring centres in UAE high schools. These academic hubs would demonstrate the firm's commitment to developing the skills that are most vital to the sector.

"This type of initiative would be a win/win for both Emirati students and oil and gas companies," the consultancy's public relations head and senior analyst Robert Mogielnicki said.

BP looked further to dispel some of the industry myths by running a number of “Discovery Days”, allowing graduates to visit the company’s worksites and offices to see first-hand what it is like to work in the sector.

The OSC chairman, William Scott-Jackson, said that Emiratis prefer to join companies that were personally recommended.

“We recommend extending the company’s network by using a highly tailored version of executive search as the main recruitment process,” he added. BP financed innvoation and entrepreneurship programmes at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology.

Many oil companies are running fast-track graduate programmes similar to BP’s three-year Graduate Challenge Programme. The initiatve focuses on early development for technical and professional careers.

Training graduates in the field does not mean that the students will go to the company that had a hand in the training. However, that does not deter BP. “You will not retain everyone that you train, but we see them as our ambassadors because we invested in them,” Mr Al Mazmi said.

The oil major is looking to increase its national participation within the company, currently totalling around 70 per cent of the workforce in Oman and 18 per cent in the UAE. “We are committed to nationalisation – the priority is to look for an Emirati first,” he said.

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