Hello everyone,
Recently, I have a number of trainees and corpers asking me about the future of oil and gas jobs in Nigeria with all the retrenchments and job losses in the industry. Hopefully, I can answer most of your questions with this thread.

Q1: What is happening in the industry?

Since may 2015, there has been a grind down of activities in the industry and the most hit departments have been the exploration and drilling and completions departments. New wells are not being drilled at the moment. However, services like well testing, workovers, wellhead services, pipelines services, production and commissioning are still very healthy as these departments must keep working as long as oil is flowing. so the real victims have been careers in drilling rigs (drilling contractors), services such as MWD, LWD, Logging etc and of course drilling engineers, planners, directional drillers, supervisors, etc.

Q2: Is there hope for the drilling department with the low oil prices?

Nigeria is a mono dependent country. this means that even if oil price falls to $10/bbl, we have no choice but to keep drilling. So there is definitely hope for the future. the slow down have been due mainly to the delay in budget passage. As we all know, NNPC is a partner in almost if not all the EPCs in Nigeria and they all look to NNPC for their drilling budgets while the NNPC looks to thr federal govt for its budget, so no federal budget means no NNPC budget and so on. But with the recent passage of the budget, we can expect drilling to resume especially in marginal fields from 3rd quarter of 2016 (August/September/October). So yes, there is definitely hope yet and as the EPCs start drilling, there will be plenty of recruitment of both service hands and drilling hands.

Q3: Will there be new recruitment or will they just call back sacked staff?

A lot of the laid off staff have already set themselves up and most of them have expectations in terms of remunerations which companies may not be willing to meet, this leaves plenty of opportunities for mid-level and exceptional junior engineers (2yrs - 7yrs experience). These set of engineers will not demand so much and will still do the job very well with even more commitment than the more experienced guys. I also see plenty of opportunities for trainees and fresh graduates who have properly prepared themselves for the industry.

Q4: I am a fresh engineer/technician with little or no experience, any hope for me?

If you fall into this category (0 - 3yrs) experience, then you will need to properly prepare yourself by investing in RELEVANT training. Some of these training could be very expensive but if they are properly structured, it is worth it. There are many online trainings but these ones are quite expensive but very good. But I know some very good and cheap institutes here in Port Harcourt that seem to have well structured training to get you started.

Q5: I have been a rig hand for many years, I now want to join the mainstream EPC for job security. What do I need?

I brought this in because I recently interviewed 2 rig hands with 8yrs experience (an asst. driller and a subsea engineer) for the role of a drilling engineer and their responses to simple everyday questions were disappointing. Both of them couldn't even tell me the duty of a drilling engineer on the rig. You need to read wide and understand what those service hands are doing on your rig and also get close to the drilling engineer and find out what he really does. Once again, investing in well structured training will do you a world of good.

I hope this helps, but for those who need further advice, feel free to contact me.

I wish you all the best in the forth coming boom.

God Bless You Op

Hello guys, if you are trying to PM me and finding it difficult, just send me a mail at oandgchief@yahoo.com. I will endeavor to get back to you as soon as I can.

Cheers all.