HOUSTON-HEADQUARTERED Paragon Engineering is, through a joint venture with Prodoil of Angola, spearheading a drive to raise the standard of young local engineers in the West African state.
Paragon has pulled the University of Houston (UH) into the frame, together with a number of international companies active offshore Angola and the University Agostinho Neto (UAN) in Angola.
“With Angola’s capabilities and stability continuing to advance, we want to be among the first to organise an effort that will help the country become self-sustainable by enhancing the technical capabilities of its people,” said Terrance Ivers, president of Paragon, which is a unit of UK consultancy, engineering and project management services group Amec.
“We wanted to find a way to better develop engineers produced from the area while using the country’s own resources.
“It’s not enough to meet minimum requirements of man-hour percentages.
“Our industry needs to step up and develop the next generation of leaders in Angola through cross-training opportunities, curriculum development, student transfer and adjunct professor opportunities.”
The core focus is very much upstream hydrocarbons, and state-owned Sonangol, together with Chevron, Prodiaman, BP, ExxonMobil, Total, Eni, Schlumberger, and Endiama, has agreed to collaborate. A key driver behind the initiative is Angola’s insistence on local content.
For the recently completed front-end engineering design (FEED) phase of the Kizomba Satellites project, Paragon Angola recently delivered on a commitment to Sonangol and ExxonMobil to deliver 25% of total man-hours – about 38,000 hours – locally in Angola. According to Ivers, the 25% man-hour commitment is one of the highest “local content” levels yet set for such a project in Angola.
It should be noted that Scottish universities are also playing their part in producing the petroleum engineers of tomorrow in Angola via their various degree programmes.