Former military personnel are key to filling the oil and gas skills gap, an industry boss has said.
Paul Groves, managing director of Petrofac Training Services, said a pilot training scheme has proved that skills gained in the armed forces were easily transferable to the North Sea oil fields.
Estimates about the number of experienced recruits required by the North Sea energy industry range between 40,000 to 120,000 over the next few years.
“For us the military is one of the key skill pools,” Groves said.
“They are losing 20,000 people – and they are good people.
“The problem is the standards in our industry dictate knowledge of and experience of working in oil and gas. It is a catch-22
“You have people you know are incredibly well trained – living on a North Sea platform is luxury compared to being stationed in Afghanistan or Iraq.
“What they don’t have is the experience of the market and the equipment can be a little different”
Highly skilled military personnel can make twice as much in the oil and gas sector, but require more training and support than just certification to get offshore.
“They don’t know outside life out of the armed forces. It is an alien world to them. We can help with that,” he said.
Groves said pressure on the forces to reduce the number of personnel means in the wake of defence cutbacks means that military schemes to re-introduce former troops into the civilian workforce are currently overwhelmed
“They are inundated. It has become to big for them,” said Mr Groves.
Petrofac’s training division has launched a series of 8-week training programmes based at its fire training facility at Montrose.
The first nine graduates have already completed initial training and have been deployed on North Sea assets to gain SVQ Level 3 qualifications.
Petrofac expects the scheme will be widened out across the industry with the support of industry-funded training body, Opito.
“We are all in the same boat, we all have the same challenges,” said Mr Groves.
The programme is a partnership between Petrofac Training Services, Petrofac Offshore Projects & Operations, the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB ) and the MoD through its the Career Transition Partnership scheme.
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