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.

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.

If you're in drilling and you're a drilling engineer, then after 3-4 years you're already marketable.

True story.

Drilling is a hot commodity and since you are a petroleum engineer, you should be able to get into drilling without any issues. As a petroleum engineer you have a lot of options. You can be

1. Production or Completion Engineer - also in demand
2. Surveillance Engineer
3. Reservoir engineer - just below drilling engineer in terms of demand
4. Simulation engineer - a specialized branch of reservoir engineering and considered the prince
& kings of reservoir engineering - so this is also in extremely high demand.

I always tell my little brothers to go for petroleum engineering instead of geology because the option for them is much wider.

RE/PE are also usually the one who leads the team and therefore are more visible to managent and usually given the upper management posts in big operators.