With Guyana’s budding petroleum industry, scores of persons are rushing to get themselves qualified within the oil and gas field; however, Director of the Department of Energy, Dr Mark Bynoe, is cautioning against being specialised in a single discipline.
During an interview on the sidelines of the recently-concluded 2nd annual Guyana International Petroleum Summit and Exhibition (GIPEX), Dr Bynoe was speaking about capacity-building to fill the gaps within the oil and gas industry.
But he pointed out that persons need to be conscious of the fact that the majority of the opportunities available are just “short-term shocks”, especially since the sector is new to Guyana.
According to the Energy Director, once the petroleum sector matures, then high demand for such skills sets will diminish. At that point, he explained, those skills can be then used in other economic sectors if they are generalised and not just specialised to the petroleum field.
“…In the early days, the oil and gas sector would employ more persons but as it begins to level off, those numbers will drop off. It’s like the construction industry… That’s why we speak to having a flattening of the skills sets, rather than being specialised because when the oil industry begins to mature, you want those skills set to be transferrable so that they’re able to move into other areas to help with the development of the country,” Dr Bynoe asserted.
The Head of the Energy Department went on to say that this is particularly important because the recent focus has been heavy on the oil and gas sector and not much attention has been placed on further improving the existing sectors within Guyana’s economy.
“There is still a dirt of certain skills set we need to enhance inclusive of the engineering field, mathematics, science. STEM is a big thing for us and if we begin to speak about utilisation of these resources, we have to have the capacity. Otherwise, what will happen, Guyana will encounter significant leakages from the economy. So even though monies will be coming in [from the oil sector], those monies will be going back out if we don’t have capacity here,” he stressed.
On this note, Dr Bynoe outlined that a number of steps have been taken to building capacity within Guyana. In fact, he noted that the Government has been working with some of the oil companies currently operating in Guyana such as CGX and ExxonMobil as well as Tullow Oil to build capacity at not only at the level of the University of Guyana but in the Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET).
Added to this, he disclosed that efforts are afoot to drill down such training as early as in the primary school stage in an effort to widen the conversations on the “new Guyana”.
However, as the Government continues to work with stakeholders to build capacity locally, there is a trend whereby these trained persons are being absorbed by private companies within the oil and gas sector.
To tackle this, the Energy Director opined that Government may need to relook at bonding students.
“These are modalities one can put in place to for the next three to six years, depending on how long you spend abroad – that’s the number of years you’d be expected to give back to the country”.
He added that it does not “mean you still wouldn’t have some level of attrition or movement of labour within different sectors occurring. But of course, you can plan, knowing that within the next three to five years, you will have these skills set available to you”.
Meanwhile, at one of the panel discussions during the GIPEX forum, Head of UG’s Department of Economics in the Faculty of Sciences, Sydney Armstrong, underscored the need to recognise the importance of the tertiary education institution in the budding industry.
He noted that UG has a major role to play in capacity-building and while it is important that the institution takes up this mantle, it is hindered by various challenges.
As such, he too underlined the need for UG to partner with stakeholders in the industry on this front. One such initiative that the institution is looking at is reaching out to the rural regions of Guyana. He said UG is looking at establishing outreach centres in hinterland communities where there would be short courses and training programmes, or even workshops and seminars for residents there.
However, he pointed out that all of this requires financing.
Only on Thursday, UG signed a G$459 million agreement with American multinational corporation – Halliburton on the sidelines of GIPEX.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) provides opportunities for developments in the Faculty of Engineering and Technology, specifically in relation to laboratory equipment, staff development and software development.
