Wow, I didn't know that the benefits have been cut that bad ... I guess they increased the salary and then they cut the benefits. Bear in mind that previously the salary for Petronas was not as competitive as other O&G companies. A lot of staff complained about the salary and in most cases they did not or could not see the "other" benefits.

After 1000 skilled personnel in Geoscience and Petroleum Engineering left (me included) left the company (Do you wonder why our current oil production is now 450K barrels per day instead of the targetted 520K barrels per day?), Petronas decided to implement a new remuneration scheme BUT I guessed they had to cut some other benefots somewhere ...

Epiyana, it's a tough call on whether to stay or go (though you have made your decision). What PSC Audit does is basically they will Audit all the expenses that the Oil Operators (Exxon/Shell/Talisman/Newfield etc etc) makes to PETRONAS. These expenses falls under the Cost Oil Recovery Mechanism so MOST of the time, this are the expenses that will go to the operators and will not fall under the PITA, PSC Share etc etc, so the Audit guys are the most feared people by the Operators. They go to the Operator's offices and basically either endorsed or not endorsed the Cost Oil Recovery accounts.

In some cases, PMU has used this processes to squeeze the operators to implement Malaysianisation. Imagine that 2 million USD cost for one American/British expats that are rejected outright by Audit, and that is for one expat.

Whenever the Operators hire an expat, they require approval from several divisions in PMU and the most persuasive criteria is whether they can claim Cost Oil or not. If they cannot claim the cost oil, they most likely will not hire the person.

That's one part of the PSC Audit scope of work.

Anyway, maybe when I'm 50, I'll return to Petronas and "contribute" to the nation. I loved working in Petronas.

I was a manager in Petronas for a very short while ... but I was with the company for 10 years so knows a lot about how it is run. Now I'm an expat in another country. Will be back this summer (August) for a 5 week vacation (mau puasa and raya in Malaysia maaaa).

There's a lot of "planner" position in the O&G industry. My experience is in the Upstream side of the business so I'll explain some of the work done by "planners" on that side.

My friend has a degree in Petroleum Engineering and they usually also do some planning in terms of looking at the production profile (i.e. how many barrels of oil can the field produce) and then compiling all those reports from all those fields and then coming up with an analysis on how much production can the company produce quarterly, yearly etc etc. The busiest time will be near the business cycle period (some companies do it in October, some in March, depends on the company)

If you are in the Banking line that I suspect you will be doing what my friend is doing. He's happy doing it, it's not as technical as he likes it to be (he was doing simulation model before) but I guess he's okay with it.

Carigali Hess has a big operation in the JDA area and with the USD15 Billion Sour Gas development project coming up, I guess they will need several planners to come up with their business plans on how much it will cost, how much production the can expect etc etc.

Hope that helps. Change is hard, but once you make it, it's easier to do it again.