No, my company produces 10 million barrels of oil per day

If you are talking about Publicly listed company yes, these 2 companies are the biggest O&G, in terms of revenue in the O&G industry, it is well known that Saudi Aramco is the biggest there is.

Here you go

http://www.petrostrategies.org/Links/World...anies_Sites.htm



This post has been edited by azraeil: Sep 19 2011, 08:56 PM

My apologies, sometimes we let our ego get the better of ourselves.

I'm a geologist so I'm not that familiar about process engineering or flow assurance. I was in a NOC before (still in an NOC now anyway) and I have dealt with the two aspect but I wouldn't want to give wrong advice (which is actually a lot worse than keeping silent). I know several colleague in PETRONAS who are in Facilities Engineering and I know both process engineering and flow assurance will probably fall under Facilities Engineering side (upstream still).

As mentioned by another poster, there is no good or bad position, it all depends on the market demand. Market demand for Geologist/Petroleum Engineers/Petrophysicist/Geophysicist are constant ... they are always high and the supply is limited so it's an employee market. If you are an engineer, then maybe some seniors here who are engineers can shed further light.

Good luck in whatever you do, have a positive attitude and I'm sure companies will appreciate you.

Wow, you're truly lost. From roustabout, riggers to geologist. I think you watch too much of Armageddon is it.

Being a roustabout or oil rigger is really kerah tenaga punya job .... really like working in those palm oil plantation where you have to do heavy duty work and the job is bloody dangerous too. A lot of accidents happens with these jobs so just a reality check .... as someone else mentioned, if you are a sporty kind a kind ... go into marketing or something like that ... I dunno ...

First Chopper OUT!!!

Heh heh heh.

You hit the problems with Petronas right on the money. I mean, I was getting kuchirat salary while someone who is blue-eyed blonde hair was getting 7 times my salary tax-free with all the children education taken care off and he was doing the same thing I was doing (heck I was doing it even better). I was going home at 9PM at night while he left at 5PM sharp and by 5:30 was already enjoying beer at Santinis (Tuesday's is Petronas expat day in Santinis).

We've complained and complained but HR was saying, nothing they can do, the then CEO was a strong believer that everyone was contributing the same to the company so there cannot be any pay difference between the technical people (Geology/RE/Drilling) and the HR/Finance people. The thing was, the demand for G&G/RE/Drilling was so high outside, so why the hell should we stay in Petronas while we can be the expatriates in the Middle East?

By the time they came around to change the salary scheme, 1500 technical staff mainly in G&G/RE/Drilling was gone. If you look at Petronas now, we have GMs and SMs and we have the fresh grads or those with less than 5 years experience and NOTHING in between. That is why they have had to hire those mega expansive expatriates to plug the hole in their technical ranks.

As I keep saying to the HR people, you are being bloody Penny-Wise Pound Foolish.

This is what happens when you let HR runs the company.

I am relating to you the situation 5 years ago, I know they have changed the salary scheme for technical professionals. The starting pay for fresh grads has increased to 4K now. When I joined the company, it was RM2050 per month, so that's doubled after 15 years. They also implemented during my last 2 years there the technical allowance for specific skill groups such as SKG9, SKG10 (G&G and Petroleum Engineering) where you get a range of allowances for your technical skills (900 for Senior Execs, 1300 for Staff and 2500 for principal etc etc)

When Dato' Shamsul came on-board 2 years ago, he drastically changed the remuneration scheme, those in the technical ladder or in certain critical skill groups are got a 30% pay raise and (I'm not sure about this), a bump in bonuses and skill allowances (though I've heard that have been removed ... not too sure).

My colleague who is at the same skill level as me is earning close to 17K a month now so that was close to 2.5 times the salary when I left 5 years ago so they have changed a lot nowadays.

They have even allowed for ex-Petronas to return on a contract basis (3 years contract IIANM) and the salary is upwards of 30K and above per month. The previous CEO had some sort of vendetta against ex-staff where there is an unwritten rule where any subsidiary is NOT ALLOWED to hire ex-staff (this must be against the labor law but it was done nonetheless). That unwritten rule has been abolished as per the new CEO.

The previous one was Tan Sri Hassan Merican, yes.

Extremely difficult. For these kind of positions you really need to have at minimum a BSc in Physics (I know of a Geophysicists who had a degree in Physics from USM but he's been doing Geophysics for the last 20 years so that was a long time ago). Nowadays, if you do not have a degree in Geology/Geophysics, you will not get that position.

Taking a couple of courses won't cut it.

They have been saying that the industry is a sunset industry for the last 30 years , same thing for Malaysia, been saying that the oil is going to run out in 15 years and that was 15 years ago ... so technically we shouldn't be producing any oil anymore .... never trust all those analyst ... these are the same analyst that tanked the economies in Europe/US etc ...

Market in Malaysia is booming ... I've got an offer for 70K a month ... but it's a contract and I have 2 small kids so can't take up the offer ...maybe when the kids are bigger we'll see.

I wouldn't say that. Easy oil is getting harder and harder to find and demand for oil is extremely high right now so that's another reason why the price has quadrupled in the last 6-7 years. I remembered 7 years ago when oil price was trading in the 25 USD range and 13 years ago it was trading at USD10 range. A lot of those skill engineers are retiring so getting skilled people is becoming harder thus due to supply and demand, these skilled people are getting paid higher and higher.

When I was in a task force in Petronas, you can see the almost 1-1 correlation with regards to the price of oil and the number of attrition in the skilled personnel that we had. By the time it was 2006, Petronas had lost a total of 1500 skilled personnel to the Middle East/Europe/Other IOC oil companies

Now the Middle East companies re concentrating on Petrochemicals and I know of an entire department (from the managers downwards) that was poached. It was a Cut & Paste operation ... the entire department became the new department in the new company but triple the pay ....

Why do you think Petronas is suffering so much right now? We have sooo many young engineers but no one to train them. You have the senior managers, the general managers and then nothing in between. My ex GM keeps asking me to come back and train the new kids ...

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Added on October 10, 2011, 1:46 am7 years I know of but not 5. I have a couple of ex Petronas with 7 years that joined my company. Then again, they are really excellent candidates (both of them worked under me )

This post has been edited by azraeil: Oct 10 2011, 01:46 AM

Suffering woooo .... the most important thing you need in the Oil & Gas industry is the ability to make decision. This ability comes with experience. Without it, you end up delaying the process which costs money which leads to opportunity lost and what not.

When you have guys that has no seniors to tell them the ropes and all you have is a supposedly structured training for the last 5 years, you end up with people not sure if their technical analysis is correct, you end up with managers not being able to make the necessary decision because they themselves don't trust their subordinates recommendation. Ends up with the process being repeated 3-4 times before they make a decision. Before I left the company I went down to see a friend in Carigali, he had 5 young engineers around the table and everyone had no blood in their face ... I was wondering why, strewn across the table was the log interpretations, some maps and the drilling supervisor on the speaker phone ...

DS: Are we on target? We have reached the recommended depth .... should we perforate? The guns are ready ...

Team: Ermm .... ermmmm .... (everyone looking at one another)

Me: What the heck is going on ... is that the rig?

Team: Yes .... the wanted to perf now ...

Me: So what's the problem? Looked at the logs, confirmed the depth with DS, told my friend that based on my technical judgement, they are at the right depth and said that it will cost USD150K a day for the rig cost if you delay the decision ...

Team: Proceed with perf .... (by the way it cost around USD1 million for the perf ) ...

That's why they were shitting in their pants .... but delaying the decision would have been a lot worse (an you still have to perf no matter what)

Turns out the decision was good .... well flowed 1500 barrels of sweet crude a day ...

Nowadays, I hear managers complaining every day that their subordinates really need some guidance ...

This is what happens when you pay peanuts .... you get monkeys.

Not the time yet lah. The kids are small, they are enjoying the international school here. I get to spend a lot of quality time with them. Once they go to college, then I'll most likely return.

Yes they do. They will pay up to RM120K per year per child ....

It's both actually. Confidence and the ability to make decision comes with experience. If you have spent 5 years doing nothing but attending training, you're not going to get the experience. When you have experienced personnel in your organization, they act as mentors to these juniors. You do not need to attend training to get the knowledge from these seniors, the interaction in the team working environment is how you can implement institutional capability development in the company (ohh dear, I sound like those Boston Consulting or McKinsey consultants during one of the task force meeting). But I strongly believe that having experienced personnel is key ... if you're a junior, you will gain confidence since you can easily asks the seniors if what you're doing is correct, the process and the path to make decision is correct. The seniors can point out that some of the process maybe redundant and can be shortened or some of the process is required and cannot be avoided. Within a 1 hour discussion, the juniors can get all the necessary do's and don't from the seniors and after 2-3 years, they themselves will know from their interaction and seeing the success that comes with the decision based on the discussion with the seniors, how things are run .. these successes will inculcate the confidence and the ability to make faster and correct decisions in the future.

Yes, training helps but in order to make the juniors understand the where the information from the training is applied, you will need on-site mentoring.

Overseas especially in the middle east, you are "expected" to mentor the locals but the problem here is, the locals refused to be mentored. They graduate and expect to be the team leaders/managers so their attitude coming out from university is screwed up. In Malaysia, I see the juniors eagerly asking questions, guidance etc and I pity them actually when I know that there's none going around since a lot of experienced personnel have left the country/organization.

There are several reasons why people leave. Supply and demand in the first place (so there is a pull factor) where the salary on the side is insanely high not to mentioned that they cover the education for your children (let's not get started on the state of our education system). There's the push factor as well, when I was in Petronas, the salary was pathetic. I was one of the first person in Petronas building a 3D geological model (heck even the book published by Petronas, the Petroleum Geology of Malaysia has my model as the front cover) but I have no savings, 2 small kids and an HR that refuses to accept the fact that they were paying peanuts while paying 10 times the amount for expats who does nothing but TALK. They keep saying that our salary was on-par with TNB, Telekom etc (funny how they don't compare even with ExxonMobil Malaysia). After a while, people got sick for being taken for granted by the company. In 1998, it was unheard of if Petronas people leaves for a contractor or operators, by 2005, it was a flood (me included). I remembered one HR GM sayign that if one leaves, there are 10 people who can replace him/her. When I left, they had to hire 3 expats to do what I was doing .... clever company don't you think.

Now, as mentioned by some other posters, Petronas has realised their folly (penny wise, pound stupid foolish) and they have change the remuneration scheme. Tier 1 personnel (Geology/Reservoir Engineers/Drilling Engineers) are on a different remuneration scale (just like what I recommended in the Corporate Strategic Study which was tossed by the then CEO) and they are doing much better, I'm told that some 7-10 years experience people are still leaving the company and that's mostly due to the push factor I guess (slave driver of a boss etc etc)

Anyway, I cherished my time in Petronas, it was a place where I was able to networked and gain tremendous amount of experience which allowed me in the end to get the job that I am doing now.

In terms of revenue? In terms of Profit? Very difficult to compare. I seriously would have stayed (and probably be a GM by now) if they have made the changes in 2005 instead of 2010. In my personal opinion, it's a good place to work.