Noble drillship visit provides UT students with up-close look at rig life, drilling equipment

By Stephen Whitfield, Senior Editor

Recruiting the next generation of workers for the oil and gas industry is one of the biggest challenges the drilling discipline faces today. Companies are constantly trying to make inroads into the student community through initiatives like job fairs and summer internships, trying to show young people how drilling can be a great fit for them as they begin their careers. 

However, even with those efforts, getting young people on board with the industry is still a challenge. Direct partnership between drilling companies and the universities that nurture this incoming workforce will be necessary to help encourage more students to choose to move into our industry.

With that in mind, Noble Corp and the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) recently partnered on an event that brought petroleum engineering students to an offshore rig. On 1 October 2024, 19 UT Austin students boarded the Noble Globetrotter 2 drillship, which was warm-stacked offshore Port Fourchon, La., for a day-long visit. 

Among other things, the students got a first-hand look at critical equipment on the rig and the opportunity to spend time with the rig crew learning about the ins and outs of living offshore on a deepwater drillship. 

“It’s our job to demonstrate to prospective students that this is a safe, welcoming and high-tech industry, and that it makes sense to dedicate a fulfilling career to it,” said Eric van Oort, Petroleum Engineering Professor at UT Austin. “The great thing about visiting the Globetrotter is that the students can come away saying ‘this is impressive, we need to really consider this seriously.’ If they’re excited, they will go back to school and tell their friends, and post enthusiastic reports on their social media and LinkedIn pages. That’s exactly what we want.” 

The students started the day with Noble’s onboarding procedures, including emergency procedure training, training on PPE and hazardous materials handling. They then spent time observing various rig components and equipment, including the riser system, riser tensioners, moonpool, BOP stack and the lower riser marine package, and custom MPD equipment. 

They also spent time on the drill floor learning about the rig’s autotripping system, an automated system that controls the pipe rackers, setback drums and dual drawworks, with minimum people on the drill floor. The equipment itself was not in operation during the visit, as the rig was warm stacked, but Robert van Kuilenburg, Offshore Improvement Manager at Noble, said this provided its own advantages. 

“When you do this kind of visit on a stacked rig, you can go to places that are normally forbidden for people to enter if there’s moving equipment around. You can go into the drilling tower, take a good look at the heave compensation systems like we did for this visit. The students can see how big everything is and really get into the design of such a system in a way that you can’t do in a classroom,” he said.

Dr van Oort agreed that being in close proximity to the equipment provided valuable insight for the students. 

“We can show them riser tensioner systems on slides in the classroom, but when they’re on the rig and they see how big they are, it really is impressive,” he said. “They start to recognize things – ‘oh, so that’s what it looks like?’ – and see what those things do. It’s an eye-opening experience to them, and there’s very little in the classroom that can supplement for that experience. People need to look at things and feel them in order to fully understand them.” 

Students were also given the chance to see the rig’s living quarters. They even received mock cabin assignments and had time to speak one-on-one with crew members about their day-to-day activities when they’re not on duty. 

“We wanted them to see all the systems,” Mr van Kuilenburg said. “That means not only the drilling systems but also stuff like the cabins and the galley. Some students were very surprised that there was actually good food onboard. It’s really important for them to see how well we take care of our people on the rig.” 

Crew members not only spoke to students about life on the rig but also about how they entered the industry and the paths they took to get to their current positions. This conversation led to Mr van Kuilenburg noticing that the students were less interested in developing long-term careers with a single company and more interested in building skills that they could potentially take to other companies and, possibly, to other industries. 

“The new reality is that, with all the new technologies being introduced, you need to start hiring people for what they bring right now for your company in that position. They do that for a few years, and maybe they grow into other positions within the company or maybe they go somewhere else leveraging that knowledge. They might spend a few years here, a few years there, but they’re actively building on their resumes. We need to recognize that, provide opportunities they see as beneficial, and accept it as reality. If we can, there is a lot to gain for our industry. If we don’t accept that, I think we’re missing out on a lot of high-potential employees.” 

The idea for the rig visit was hatched during a conversation that Mr van Kuilenburg and Dr van Oort had at the 2024 IADC Advanced Rig Technology Conference, held in Austin last August. Students were selected out of 100 applicants from Dr van Oort’s undergraduate drilling class in the petroleum and geosystems engineering department. 

He said he prioritized students who had specifically expressed an interest in a drilling career – as opposed to other branches of petroleum engineering, such as reservoir engineering. He also wanted a diverse representation of students, so 12 of the 19 students selected were women.

“It’s so important to show women that this industry is welcoming to them, because they see it as a predominantly male world that’s very difficult to enter,” Dr van Oort said. “They need to see that this is a workplace where they can be themselves, be respected and have an excellent work experience. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have great female foremen, drillers or drilling engineers right now, but our industry can be a hard place for women, and we need to change that if we want to have access to a larger, more diverse pool of human resources.”

Mr van Kuilenburg said the visit allowed Noble to make connections with students who are “truly motivated” to join the industry, and the company is currently offering onshore and offshore internships for some of these students. 

Providing more opportunities to get interested students on the rig and in front of the company, he said, can only be a net positive. 

“We want to see the people that are motivated and give them the opportunity to look at what life on the rig is. If they want to go into the industry, that’s great. If they decide after such a visit that they don’t want to do this, that’s a win for us as well – because we want to give these students a chance to see if this is the life they want to live before they join our ranks.”

Mr van Kuilenburg said he hopes the visit can serve as an example for other drilling contractors as they work to engage with the next-generation workforce. Approvals for the rig visit from upper management at both Noble and UT Austin were granted quickly, showing there is enthusiasm to support efforts like this. 

“I hope the industry as a whole looks at something like this and sees how easily it can be done,” he said. “Whatever red tape you may have can be navigated safely and efficiently, as we have shown with this visit. We should also tap more into the potential of our crews by having them talk to prospective students who want to work in our industry. On the visit, they proved to be very effective ambassadors of our industry because of their authenticity.”

Dr van Oort agreed and indicated his willingness his work with other drilling contractors to organize such rig visits. 

“I think we need to really come up with more of these practical ‘hands-on’ industry-academia partnerships that showcase what our industry is like in actuality, not just in theory as communicated in university classrooms. The results of such partnerships will go a long way in addressing our industry’s resourcing problem.” DC