GLOBAL WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
TOP: The Center for Local Business De-
velopment in Georgetown, Guyana, has
played a critical role in helping local
companies enhance their knowledge
around basic functions of the oil and
gas industry. Susan Scott (left), Socio-
economic Manager for ExxonMobil, and
Natasha Gaskin-Peters (right), Center
Directo r, spoke at the 2022 SPE ATCE in
Houston about the various programs
that have been rolled out around things
like HSSE, standard payment systems
and the digital procurement proces s.
BOTTOM: In 2018, the center began of-
fering a program to help Guyanese
companies enhance their HSSE man-
agement system s. Companies were
offered one-on-one sessions to help
them review or even write related doc-
ument s, like HSSE manual s.
Once the center got off the ground, it then
began providing tailored, individual sup-
port to various Guyanese suppliers in the
form of one-on-one mentoring. The bulk
of these efforts centered on training on
international standards and compliance.
For example, the center’s first mentoring
project involved working with a Guyanese
management consultancy to help it obtain
certification in ISO 9001, a safety manage-
ment system standard. Overall, the center
has mentored 26 companies in ISO 9001
certification, including companies focused
on fabrication and machining, rigging and
slinging, logistics and training .
To help Guyanese companies enhance
their HSSE management systems, the cen-
ter also developed a program in 2018 that
38 offered one-on-one sessions to help them
review related documents. If the company
did not have existing documents to review,
the center would provide information on
how to write HSSE manuals, including
how to develop standard operating pro-
cedures, emergency preparedness policy
and environmental policy. This program
also included short courses on topics such
as job safety analysis, workplace assess-
ment and hazard recognition, and incident
management. As of 2021, more than 370
Guyanese companies have participated in
the program.
The center also continues to work with
Guyanese companies to develop HSSE-
focused workforce training programs.
While the training could be customized
according to company needs, they typi-
cally focus on five key areas of safety man-
agement: loss prevention, working in con-
fined spaces, working at height, excavation
and working near moving equipment.
In early 2022, the center kicked off its
Project Management Mentorship program.
ExxonMobil had identified a gap among
Guyanese companies in their knowledge
of how to manage multiple projects and
deliverables simultaneously, effectively
and in a timely manner.
The center also has ongoing dialogue
with Guyanese policymakers, regulators
and other key stakeholders to ensure that
regulations are put in place to help bolster
the local supplier industry. This is critical
for local businesses, many of whom are too
small to directly engage with policymak-
ers and to have a voice in important regu-
latory discussions, Ms Gaskin-Peters said.
“The businesses have been very keen
to win opportunities, but they don’t know
how to navigate the industry and engage
with the key stakeholders,” she said. “We
engage governments and all the business
associations, and that’s key in getting that
buy-in into the local community.” DC
For more information, please refer to SPE
210444, “The Importance of Early Investments in
Local Content: Lessons Learned from Guyana’s
Enterprise Development Centre Five Years In.”
M A R C H/A P R I L 2023 • D R I L L I N G C O N T R AC T O R
GLOBAL WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
Gender equality study explores
barriers women in Persian Gulf
still face in oilfield careers
Industry has shown progress, but more
leadership will be needed to help women
enter field-based roles, upper management
BY STEPHEN WHITFIELD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
As drilling activity continues to ramp up
across the Middle East, the growing need
for a competent workforce also becomes
more evident. To fill this talent gap, many
countries in the region have provided
more opportunities in recent years for
its female workforce, allowing women to
take advantage of higher education and
industry-specific training.
Still, a gender imbalance in the work-
force remains . Texas A&M University
at Qatar (TAMUQ) and Northwestern
University in Qatar cited that as the key
motivation behind a recent study explor-
ing the obstacles that female petroleum
engineers face.
To gauge the oil and industry’s progress
on gender equality in the workforce – both
in Qatar and in the wider Persian Gulf
region – the two schools conducted inter-
views in 2020-2021 with nine women and
three men working in the industry. Based
on the personal experiences shared by
those interviewees, the schools analyzed
the findings and then provided recom-
mendations for organizations to help sup-
port women across all career levels. In
particular, the study called for more oppor-
tunities and encouragement for women to
pursue upper management positions.
“We’re trying to see what the challeng-
es are ,” Albertus Retnanto, Professor of
Petroleum Engineering at TAMUQ, said of
the project’s goals. “What’s happening to
women when they’re looking to get in the
industry, and what happens to them once
they get here? What’s the progress? Some
women have built careers here and are
starting to move up the ranks, but there is
a leak in the pipeline, and it’s important for
us to see why,” he said in a presentation at
the 2022 SPE ATCE in October.
Challenges in hiring
and in the workplace
The 12 participants who were inter-
viewed included field engineers and
managers working within the oil and gas
industry in areas like reservoir perfor-
mance and digital integration ; some were
also academics in the petroleum engineer-
ing field. Although not every participant
was working in Qatar at the time of the
study, they each had ties to the coun-
try, either through education or former
employment . Companies with employ-
ees represented in the study include BP,
ConocoPhillips, Halliburton, QatarEnergy,
Shell and SLB.
Among the top challenges the partici-
pants cited when talking to the research-
ers were a lack of policies or initiatives to
promote women into executive positions ,
as well as explicit discouragement or even
discrimination by coworkers and manag-
ers during the recruiting and hiring pro-
cess. For instance, female participants said
they had to deal with biased assumptions
and overly personal interview questions
that were irrelevant to their professional
capabilities and experiences.
Several participants in the study also
said they saw a stigma placed on women
who wanted to take on technical field-
based jobs. One woman noted that she was
frequently questioned on why she would
want to study petroleum engineering and
work in the oilfield, and was even told that
This graph from a 2019 McKinsey study shows that there is a lower percentage of
women represented at all career levels in the oil and gas industry compared with
other STEM industries. Representation was also lower in oil and gas versus the av-
erage for all companies in the study – encompassing more than 250 companies in
industries like banking, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and healthcare. This and
other findings from the study were cited in a 2022 report that looked more specifi-
cally at gender equality among the oil and gas workforce in the Persian Gulf. Image
source: McKinsey & Company, “How Women Can Help Fill the Oil and Gas Industry
Talent Gap.”
D R I L L I N G C O N T R AC T O R • M A R C H/A P R I L 2023
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