Thu, 18 Oct 2012

The promise of the birth of an oil industry for Ireland should provide opportunities for recruiters, potentially more than for Irish workers – although nothing is likely to come to fruition in a hurry, Recruiter learns.

Upstream oil & gas firm Providence Resources issued an update last week (10 October) on the Barryroe oil field, 50km off the coast of Cork, which it has majority control of (80:20) alongside partner Lansdowne Oil and Gas. This outlined discoveries of potential oil for extraction in the field; findings that a spokesperson for the company told Recruiter were “far ahead of expectations”.

And speaking to the BBC, Providence chief executive Tony O’Reilly Jr said this indicated “the beginning” of an Irish oil industry, which he hoped would spark “a renaissance of interest by international companies” in the country.

However, the Providence spokesperson also tells Recruiter: “It’s still a little bit away from there being a producing field… at least a couple of years,” and potential recruitment providers to the new industry are very much in wait and see mode.

Global engineering recruiter Fircroft has said it shan’t be “looking at Ireland for future short-term growth of our business”, while a manager at another major oil & gas recruiter, who asked not to be identified, also told Recruiter it was too early to look at this as a clear opportunity, with the project being, in industry parlance, very much at “concept” rather than “feed” stage. 

However, the manager did add that the delivery of the project would be facilitated by Ireland’s infrastructure, which is already significantly stronger and more advanced than other countries that have seen significant oil industry growth in recent years.

Professional recruiter Morgan McKinley has some contact with the oil & gas industry, in particular through its established engineering industry. Martin O’Leary, a technical senior consultant in the firm’s original market of Ireland, says the new development is “something we’re definitely monitoring”. He adds: “We are definitely going to keep track of it, but I don’t see it coming up with a quick turnaround,” and also adds that when it does come to fruition, “Irish employees probably won’t have the skill set”.

Alastair Cole, associate director at international energy recruiter Spencer Ogden, agrees, saying: “We would expect disruption to local skills pools to be minimal as the specialist workforce required for this type of project is very mobile.”

He adds: “Advanced technologies in the field allow much of the management, support and even engineering teams to work remotely from anywhere in the world,” although he says that “heavy investment in training and development” from leading industry firms often create employment opportunities for local communities.

David Leyshon, managing director of UK and international technical recruiter CBSbutler, tells Recruiter he would “love to get very excited by it… but we shouldn’t”.

CBSbutler already operates in Ireland and has some contact with the oil industry. Asked whether this opportunity was something that moving forward the company would see as an opportunity, he says “there’s still a long way to go on this”, also claiming that this should be kept in perspective on two grounds. Firstly, the fact that the site has seen exploration since the 1970s, Leyshon claims, and secondly that the total amount of oil that might be produced is relatively small. 

Providence has suggested a total of 280m barrels, according to the BBC, with International Energy Agency estimates suggesting global demand is likely to exceed 90m barrels a day in 2013.