Friday 4 June 2010

All Change

All good things must come to an end..

I am no longer with the same company any more, and so I have a new blog. It can be found here http://oilfield-services.blogspot.com/

I'm dealing with different clients and areas, but it would be great if you could encourage any one you know to kepe an eye on it.

All the best.

Friday 23 April 2010

Returned at last

Well, as some of you may have guessed, I am now the proud father of a lovely baby boy called James, born on the 7th, 7lbs 14oz. He had a bit of a dramatic entrance, but mum and baby are fine now, and we're very happy.

Of course, only now am I getting back into the swing of things, and getting up to date with the recent developments in the market. Of course, the Horizon disaster is one of the main headlines at the moment, and is really tragic. I know all our thoughts are with the families of those killed and injured. It just shows how important proper safety and other procsdures are, and how much the industry needs to continue improving and updating these systems and processes.

It's not uncommon in what I do for me to speak to candidates who complain bitterly about the HSE systems on board a rig, and very often this will be the reason why they are looking to leave. Although things are a lot tighter than they used to be, and in the North Sea in particular, procedures are obviously extremely stringent, I still come across people working for Major contractors who tell me about situations where corners are cut, people aren't there when they have to be, and of horrible mistakes and accidents. Hopefully this horrible incident will encourage some companies once again to look at where they can increase safety rather than cut costs.


In other news, Vantage Drilling are profiled in Rigzone this week. A relatively new Contractor, they seem to have developed a good reputation for themselves, and are continuing to grow.

Maersk have a new rig which will be out later this year. My money would be it'll go to GOM or Brazil, but I am guessing slightly.

Also, Halliburton are to buy Boots and Coots. This came as abit of a surprise to me, but as usual, what do I know.. Article here

There was an interesting article on Reuters here about where things might be headed, and hinted at a combination of caution and slight optimism for the rig markets.

Jobs wise, I'm still getting into things again, but always on the lookout for solid people with good experience and in-date certification.

Thursday 1 April 2010

Drill Obama, Drill

Sorry, i couldn't resist the title.

As the birth of my first born approaches I've been a bit lax posting, so apologies for that. It's imminenet, so if I don't post anything for a week or so, then it'll be here. Or it'll be because I just haven't posted anything...

Big changes in the American offshore sector were announced today, which I suspect most of you will know about, but if not there is a link here. Of course, it won't mean much until 2012, but it gives us something to look forward to.

It seems though that the media aren't too clear on what will happen, many think that the price of petrol will plummet the moment there is a rig in the sea, and worse still, they think that hundreds of platforms will be built overnight, blocking shipping and attracting enemy radar. Not that I claim to know everything by any means, but I'm pretty sure this won't be the case.

Drilling has been underway in Iraq for a while now, but BP have awarded some drilling contracts recently. I did have a client who were looking for a large number of Middle Eastern nationals for some roles there, but they were contract roles, so the insurance premiums for us would be through the roof.

Bad news in the Falklands, it seems the oil quality wasn't great of the little that they did find. I guess they might find more elsewhere, but it doesn't bode too well, especially considering the political cost with the Islands' Argentinian neighbours.

I can't remember if this has been posted by me already, but the Stena Don is off to Greenland for Cairn Energy, to join the Stena Forth. I don't think they hav efound anything yet, but here's hoping.

So that's about all for today. Jobs wise, things are still up and down. I'm looking for:

  • Cementing equipment Installation Project co-ordinators with experience on deepwater rigs for a variety of locations.
  • Subsea Engineers with Hydril/MUX experience for a variety of locations
  • Good Senior Drilling candidates for some Jack ups in Malaysia going to Mumbai.

If you know anyone, pass this on. I'm trying to get my readership up to 500, (currently 200) so please do ask your buddies and pals to come and have a look.

Monday 22 March 2010

Recruitment Scams

Got this email from Oil Offshore Marine re: recruitment scams. Probably worth a look if you are unsure what to look out for.

1. Job Scams: What is a job scam? How do the scammers act? How to protect yourself? and more... http://www.oil-offshore-marine.com/bewarejobscams.php
2. How to Use a Big Name for Illegal Gains: Shell Nigeria Fake Website http://www.oil-offshore-marine.com/how-to-use-a-big-name-for-illegal-gains-shell-nigeria-fake-website.php
3. AkerKvaerner Fraud Attack http://www.oil-offshore-marine.com/aker-kvaerner-fraud-attack.php
4. Statoil ASA "Joins" the Scams "League" http://www.oil-offshore-marine.com/statoil-asa-joins-the-scams-league.php
5. One Company - Several Websites? http://www.oil-offshore-marine.com/one-company-several-websites.php
6. Does ExxonMobil Have a New Website? http://www.oil-offshore-marine.com/does-exxonmobil-have-a-new-website.php
7. And, of course, the famous Scam Black List from http://www.oil-offshore-marine.com/bewarejobscams.php#7
It will only take a couple seconds of your time, but it may save someone you know both money and time. Please help us. We Need You!

Wednesday 17 March 2010

Happy St. Patrick's day

Too busy at the moment, lots of stuff happening, which I can only view as an encouraging sign.

Quite a few new contracts and oil fields going out to tender, so let's hope we can get everone back to work, and make everyone's life that bit easier.

Dolphin have won 2 new contracts for their rigs, which is good news, the Bredford and the Bideford. And Seadrll have a contract for the West Epsilon. It might be old news, but Rowan also have picked up the odd bit of work on their monstrous Jack up Rigs.

There's still some debate goping on about the Falklands, but I won't repeat myself here, and there's also the ongoing hat about developing US offshore drilling, but again, it would take me forever to link to it all. Safe to say, there's a lot of Chat, and not much action.

Finally, the BBC have a report about how expensive petrol is in the UK (that's Gas to our American cousins). It is getting very expensive to go for a spin these days. No link, but you can expect this to become a major issue again once the election nonsense is over.

Jobs wise, most of mine are covered at the moment, but if you know any good Cyberbase Drillers with Deepwater experience, please pass my details on.

Tuesday 2 March 2010

Usual Mix

It's been some few weeks, but at least the weather is turning back into spring.

There's been a fair bit happening, and as usual here's the highlights as scientifically chosen by me based on what I think is interesting:

Transocean's profits have gone down a bit, link here and there's also a reasonable overview of the market in the article. This article also highlights how demand on deepwater rigs is going to increase costs and put pressure on the market. This in turn will put pressure on the labour market, so if you want my opinion (unqualified though it may be), deepwater is definitely where you want to be getting your skills if you want to remain at the top of the job pile.

A few contractors flirting with Aramco to get their rigs in use, no bad thing, although I have heard that they can be quite a demanding client, plus visas for Saudi are something of a nightmare.

Songa haven't been impressing anyone recently with their stance stopping people getting off their rig in Singapore. I see it's over now, but I haven't heard of this happening before. Don't really know all the details, but there does seem to be a fair bit of union activity down in the antipodes at the moment.

More Falklands news, they're already looking for another rig down there.

And finally, some encouragement from the folks at Rigzone.

Jobs wise:

AD for Cyberbase Semi in North Sea.
Driller and Chief Engineer for 70 days in North Sea. Semi Experience.
Barge Master for DP2 Barge in UAE
Mooring Master for non-propelled, moored barge in UAE
Maintenance Super for FPSO in SE Asia
Chief Electrician and Chief Mechanic for Jack ups in India

As usual, please email me and tell your friends...

Friday 19 February 2010

No war yet

Not any new ones anyway...

News wise, some boys in London were done for insider trading on oil stocks.

At the risk of repeating myself, Pride are now doing well on the deepwater side, and struggling with the Jack ups.

And, because I'm on a roll when it comes to repetition, here's the latest on the Falklands.

Jobs wise, there's only a few things on the go:

Cementing installation project co-ordinator - need equipment installation experience
2nd Engineer PSV - North Sea
Marine Superintendant - Shore based Singapore.

Sorry not more chat this week, just trying to find the time.

Friday 12 February 2010

Running to stay still

Big gap between postings this and last week, largely due to a high work volume, so I can't really complain. Few new jobs in, see the end as usual.

The Falklands are the big story at the moment. The UK plans to start drilling there in February, and the Argentinians are less than happy, claiming soveriegnty over the area. With all of our eggs in the Iraq and Afghanistan baskets, I don't know how sensible an idea this is to be poking this particular animal, but what do I know. Lots of links on this here and here and an FT article is here (remember you only get one of these a day!)

Also, the Latest development which I got as I was writing this, the Argentines have blocked a vessel with some supplies, so I think they might do something similar when the rig goes there.

This is quite interesting too, although it's just a short term contract, it looks like American companies are invovled in shallow water jack up work in Brazil. Let's hope there's more work for Jack ups down there, as it'll increase demand for staff.

Finally, Richard Branson appears to have jumped on the Peak Oil bandwagon, but let's be honest, this article is in the Mirror..

Jobs wise, a lot of Marine requirements at the moment.

- HSE co-ordinator and Chief Engineer for accommodation Barge in West Africa
- SDPO and Barge Master for Construction/pipelay Barge in SE Asia (DP2)
- Master Mariner for OSV in North Sea
- 2nd Engineer for PSV in North Sea

Cheers, will try to post a bit earlier next week, if we aren't at war with Argentina of course.

Monday 1 February 2010

Time flies

Back around to Monday again already.

Slightly oil related conspiracy theory of the year here. I'm sure this happened in a James Bond film...

In more relevant news, Ensco have been profiled in this article, highlighting the problems that they are going to face with these shiny new rigs of theirs. There's a few deepwater rigs already out of contract, but hopefully they'll be able to pick up some work with a decent operator so they can recoup some of their costs - my money is on Petrobras....

True to form, the UK government have decided way too late to give tax breaks for oil exploration in the North Sea. In my humble opinion (from my exalted standpoint of knowing next to nothing about anything) this is FAR too late. If they had dones something a year ago, perhaps the problems in the North Sea would have been a lot less serious. Anyway, the article is here.

Songa are up, Hercules are down. Showing once again that companies that deal with me for their recruitment can only do well out of it.

OK, it might also have something to do with Songa being a small deepwater driller, and Hercules being a much larger driller, having Jack ups and Barges, which are not popular options at the moment.

Jobs wise, pretty much covered for candidates at the moment, but I wanted to post a bit of advice when it comes to writing CVs/resumes for oil and gas:

- Always write a CV in reverse chronological order, most recent position first.

- A contentious point this one, but I find it is better to avoid the first person "I worked on x,y,z", keep it in the third person, or non-specific, and watch your tenses.

- Clients these days look for specifics. They want to know if you have worked on a Semi, a drillship, or a Jack up. They want to know the name of the Unit, whether it is Cyberbase, DP, and what types of systems you worked with. They want to know how long you were there for, and in what role.

- Don't put all your history and equipment at the start and then have a few dates and with what company, a CV should read almost like a history of what you did where.

- Don't repeat big chunks of information, and don't write "same as previous role" in a job description. Look for things that stand out about any position - challenges, equipment, location etc.

- Make it readable. The best format is as follows:

Personal details

Certificates/Education

Job history

dates Job title
company

job description....

repeat etc.

Hope this helps, preaching over.

Monday 25 January 2010

IT issues resolved

Apologies for no post last week, I.T. stuff happened, so the blog didn't.

Plenty of news though. There's been a big fight in the Antipodes about wages for offshore oil workers. I can't see it specified anywhere exactly what jobs these boys are doing, but they are asking for an increase of about $60k US, so either they are horribly underpaid, or they're greedy as hell. I think maybe the former.

Jack ups are in the news again, this report says what we are all thinking - "why do they keep building Jack ups when they have quite a few stacked already?" I suspect some of these companies will shift them pretty fast to cut their losses. Sustainable growth it aint. They'll probably get utilised eventually, but in the meantime, the guys paying for them, especially smaller cos and new startups, will really struggle.


Close to my heart this one - it's a reasonably interesting (if badly written) article about recruitment scams and what to watch out for. There's a coupla points I would raise on it though...

1) NEVER, EVER pay money for recruitment if you are a candidate. In the UK, it is illegal to request money for the purposes of inding a job. If a UK company asks you for money, report them to the DTI. (Department of Trade and Investment)

2) If you're happy to go to Nigeria, fine. Don't assume it's a fake job just because it's there.

Jobs wise, I need a Norwegian for a shore based H&S position in Stavanger, and I also need Geophysicists with 10 years experience for everywhere (particularly the UK).

Jobs from previous post are still active too.

More later in the week.

Thursday 14 January 2010

New year

So, it's back to the grindstone. I hope you had a good new year, and I hope that this year is good to you.

Optimism seems to be the general feeling at the moment. Rigzone have been talking about things looking a bit better in terms of increasing rig counts. A few of my clients have taken the next microsteps forward in getting rigs on contract, and the oil price has been up, and down. And up again, and down again, and so on.

There have been a few retrospectives on how terrible 2009 was for the industry; one here, but continuing with the positive theme, Cairn have secured another rig for Greenland, link here, there's a healthy debate about where is best to look for oil here and here.

The Guardian also had an interesting article about how offshore windfarms will need offshore workers, here. In my experience, the crossover in skills is actually pretty easy when it comes to recruitment, but the problem is the companies want people who have already done this before, which in this case no-one has. It'll be interesting to see what happens...

Jobs wise, things are busier than they were, although most roles require something specialist:

- Geophysicist, 10 years +, Edinburgh, UK
- ET, Jack up experience only, Cyberbase too, S.E. Asia
- Process Engineering Lead, Aberdeen, UK.
- Drillers, Toolpushers, Rig Supers, need Offshore Modular workover experience
- Barge Master, Needs to have worked on 8 point mooring Anchor Handling pipelay, no fixed location as of yet.
- Master Mariner, AHTS vessel, Angola
- SDPO for Dive Support Vessel, need Sat-dive experience, Qatar
- ETO, Chief Engineer, 2nd Engineer, DP2 Barge experience, UAE
- Commercial Manager, downhole tools co experience, North Scotland

As usual, if you are interested, please email, or if you know anyone who might be, I'm still doing the Whisky for referrals program!