Yes, one of the reason I am not recommending Aramco is the "downside" as you mentioned. Malaysia will be on the Sterling Payroll so you'll be getting your salary in Pound Sterling. The base salary will be protected against the USD at the date of Hire at 90% protection rate. So if you are hired for example today (GBP is at USD 1.62, then 90% of 1.62 is USD 1.46 protection rate). If the GBP goes lower than 1.46, then your salary will be protected. This is actually an upside as you will not need to worry about currency fluctuations that much and I am told that the new hire are hired at a very high base salary (which is of course causing some discontent with existing staff but that is another story altogether)

The downside is the living arrangements. The Dhahran Compound is full so most new hires now are located in the Abqaiq compound which is 70 kilometres away from Dhahran (where you will work). There is a daily transportation bus but some people may have issues with spending 1 hour each way (2 hours return) on the bus every working day.

Being far from Dhahran also is an issue because Dhahran is where everything is close by (shopping etc etc). It is basically like you living in Seremban but working in KL. Some people are okay with it because they are used to it, but some people might have an issue. It takes longer especially for your family to acclimatized to the living arrangements.

The E&P Business line is slowly relocating those in Ras Tanura (beachside compound also 75km from Dhahran) and Abqaiq to Dhahran but the process is slow and housing is not very cooperative in this area.

For those asking about Non ONG experience, most of the Malaysians here are either Geologist/RE/PE or Drilling Engineers but there are some in the Health & Safety and also a group who specializes in SAP and usually these are the skill sets that Aramco is looking at.

I have to say though, once your family is settled down in Aramco, it is bloody difficult to move. I have had several offers coming my way but my family just refused to move since they are happy here ..... sigh.

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Added on October 21, 2012, 3:22 pm

Petroleum Geoscience is the study of Geology (rocks, depositional environment etc) but related to the Petroleum industry (I did pure geology in the uni which makes it harder to understand it's impact on the petroleum industry). Petroleum Geophysics is the study of Geophysics (seismic study, signal processing) bu related to the Petroleum Industry. usually if you are talking P. Geoscience, you will take a couple of Geophysics courses and vice versa. If you study P. geoscience, you will be doing Geoscience work (Field Geologist, operations etc etc) while if you did P. Geophysics, you will be concentrating mostly in either soing Seismic Data Processing work or Seismic Interpretation (Qualitative/Quantitave work)

P. Geophysics and Petrophysics are 2 totally different animal. Petrophysics involves the interpretation of wireline log data (those wireline daatsets acquired by the oil companies to determine the reservoir qualities or the presence of hydrocarbons in the wells they drilled).

All 3 skill sets are in extremely high demand by the industry.