John Hague, senior VP and MD of MENA for Aspentech discusses opportunities and challenges facing the next generation of engineers
Knowledge and innovation are essential ingredients for success. With large numbers of experienced workers retiring and fewer younger, skilled workers entering the profession – the next generation of engineers will be vital in securing commercial sustainability for the refinery industry.
A knowledge gap has developed and addressing this issue is a priority for many companies. Investment in talent and technology is essential to remain competitive. Moreover, building and sustaining technical and managerial skills in key occupations can be a constant challenge.
Having the necessary skills and resources to keep pace with dynamic market changes and responding quickly with informed decisions is vital to influence profitability. To nurture success, companies need to develop a culture of people development and embrace leading-edge software technology to future proof their business.
The global problem
Refinery planning, for example, has traditionally been conducted by experts who have been in the planning role for many years and who have specialist knowledge and the ability to interpret complex data sets in order to make informed decisions.
Many of these highly experienced Planners are now reaching retirement and their places are being taken by younger, less experienced personnel who often view refinery planning as another short term role in their career progression.
The skills shortage is endemic as large numbers of experienced planners and industry experts have already or will soon exit the oil and gas industry, leaving a smaller number of younger less experienced workers remaining.
The next generation
The younger generation of refinery Planners typically has different expectations of what technology can deliver than the older generation that is retiring. They expect innovative software, which is intuitive, easy to use and highly visual. They need to be able to get ‘up-to-speed’ quickly rather than having years to hone their skills and become effective.
In addition, with increasing commercial pressures and a more dynamic economic environment in the refining industry, more and more people in the organisation want access to the data generated by the Planners in order to make informed business decisions.
Equipping the organisation with leading-edge software helps address these challenges, by enabling less experienced Planners to become effective more quickly and for the output from their effort to be accessible and understandable to others in the organisation.
Around three-quarters of the world’s refining capacity are planned using Aspen PIMS. As an industry standard, Planners across the globe have relied on PIMS to help them make crucial business and operational decisions impacting the profitability of their refineries and allowing them to maximise margins.
Aspen PIMS Platinum is a significant enhancement to the PIMS family, providing enhanced post solution analysis capabilities with a new set of features for visualisation and improved understanding of the PIMS results (including configurable flowsheets, 2-d and 3-d graphs and tables).
It will support the capturing of expertise from the more experienced Planners, thereby speeding up the learning process for new Planners enabling faster and more insightful decision making.
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Investing for the future
In order to address the skills shortage, several companies are taking measures to address this issue with their own training and graduate programmes. For example, MOL PIMS Academy is soon to enroll its fourth intake of students.
The goal of the program is to make it possible for young graduates to quickly acquire the key technical competences and practical experience necessary for to become effective Supply Chain professionals in the petroleum industry.
The training includes education in Downstream Business Fundamentals, Supply Chain Management, LP modeling, Short Term Scheduling and other related topics. Other examples of investing for the future include, France Total, which created its own university in 2005 followed by an education department in 2010.
In the United Arab Emirates, where it is a requirement to employ 75% local nationals by 2014, the company created the Total Academy and the first group of students graduated in 2012.
Recently, Exxon Mobil set up the Sakhalin Technical Training Centre, running internationally accredited training programmes to allow it to raise the share of Russian nationals working on the Sakhalin-1 project to 90% by 2012.
Also, Bahrain Petroleum Company is renowned for its scholarship and sponsorship programmes. Since the 1960s, it has had a strong training and development element to its business and many leaders around Bahrain actually came through the “Bapco School”.
It continues this tradition today through scholarships at local universities on a range of subjects. Bapco also sponsors many employees to continue their personal and professional development through overseas degrees and courses.
Securing a generation for profitability
The downstream oil industry has experienced dramatic changes in recent years with increased costs, declining demand for fuels leading to excess capacity, increased competition and reduced margins.
At the same time, it is also facing a shortage of qualified workers. In order to remain competitive refiners must invest in leading-edge software technology to ensure they are able to continue to make the best economic decisions and extract maximum profit from the volatility in the market – it is the lifeblood to achieving commercial success even with less experienced resources.
