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.