Malaysia faces oil and gas ‘brain drain’

March 22, 2013

As if zombies eating our brains wasn’t scary enough…

Dateline Bangkok Post Ides of March:

Malaysian oil and gas workers are being lured away from home by foreign companies, leading to a shortage of skilled labour, according to the deputy director-general of the country’s Manpower department.

 

A Petroliam Nasional Bhd. (PETRONAS) gas station stands in front of the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 5.

Malaysia is facing a “brain” drain in the oil and gas industry as local workers are lured away by higher salaries abroad, according to the deputy director-general of its Manpower department. (Bloomberg photo)

 

Multinational oil and gas firms based in Singapore and the Middle East are attracting Malaysian workers with higher salaries, Syed Mohamad Noor Syed Mat Ali told The Star.

He added that foreign countries were reaping the benefits of Malaysia’s efforts to train locals, who subsequently left to work abroad.

“There is nothing much that Malaysia can do to stop highly skilled locals in the O&G sector from working in other countries,” said Mr Mohamad Noor.

3 Comments | engineering, investment, Malaysia, oil and gas | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Wata

Can PETRONAS stem the O&G Brain Drain?

March 10, 2009

Here’s a thought for you. Some O&G production companies don’t like their former staff coming back and interfacing with their current workforces for a number of reasons:

  • morale: staffer is doing the same (or less!) work for more pay.
  • dilemma: would a recently departed staff member be as loyal to the project, she’s already shown a tendency to grab opportunities regardless of timing.

And I guess it would be logical that the longer the time between departure and returning to the ex-employer fold, the less the pain of reconciliation.

In addition, there have been discussions in the past about production companies (aka PSCs) pinching staff from each other.

Now, PETRONAS / PCSB has tentacles into all PSCs in Malaysia. If there is such a policy, doesn’t that mean that any staff who leave PNAS are discriminated against when applying for work with a production company? Sure, they could apply to work with the service providers, but I would think that really isn’t where their strengths lie.

So, what do you do? Some staffers join a ‘stop gap’ company to reset their CVs as it were before working for (notice I didn’t say applying to) a PSC.

Another option is to get out of Malaysia altogether. If you agree to the above logic, or a variant of, you would stop wondering why PNAS staff go overseas once they decide to leave the ship. There’s a push and pull factor involved here.

5 Comments | engineering, Malaysia, oil and gas | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Wata