'Oil & gas sector offers lucrative, stable employment'

Oil and Gas is a physically demanding sector, but those who excel may look forward to a life-long career. Making the cut...

The average manpower requirement in the petroleum industry is very high compared to other industries, so there will be a lot of vacancies in the near future.

This optmistic view is shared by Prof PK Banik, director of the School of Petroleum Technology, PDPU, Gandhinagar. "The growth rate in the petroleum industry is higher than the national GDP growth rate hence the requirement for petroleum engineers is there," he elaborates. He is very optimistic about the job scenario in the petroleum sector in the coming years, and according to him two factors will ensure a high demand of qualified professionals in the sector.

In the recent past though, interest has been generated in areas like nuclear energy and solar energy, due to the thrust on environmental concerns, the reality is that these alternative forms of energy have not taken off in India. Hence the focus is likely to remain on the petroleum sector for many years to come. "I expect the petroleum sector to be in focus for the next 25-30 years," says Prof Banik. Along with coal, oil still remains India's key to secure its energy needs and economic growth.

Another lucrative aspect of this sector is a relatively stable employment scenario. "Traditionally, employment in this sector is lifetime employment. For example, if one starts his career with IOC, he generally retires with IOC. It's so even with larger international companies," says Dr Parag Diwan, vice-chancellor of UPES Dehradun, which according to him is the first petroleum institute in India.

FAST FACTS

Best Schools
PDPU, Gandhinagar;  UPES, Dehradun; RGIPT, Rae Bareilly; ISM, Dhanbad; Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh; IIT-Madras

Qualification
Diploma, BTech, MTech, MBA

What you become
Geologist, geophysicist, petrophysicist, drilling engineer, process control engineer, health and safety engineer, reservoir engineer, mud logging engineer, MWD engineer (measurement while drilling), well testing analyst, pipeline engineer, design engineer, well stimulation engineer, R&D engineer, sales officer, marketing officer, business development officer

Recruiters
Accenture, Adani, BPCL, British Gas, CRISIL, Deloitte, Essar Oil, GAIL, Gulf Oil, HPCL, Indian Oil, Infosys, Jindal Group, L&T

Interestingly, petroleum engineering is an amalgamation of all engineering disciplines. Full-fledged petroleum engineers must be chemical engineers, they must be electrical engineers, to some extent civil engineers and instrumentation and control engineers. They must know everything.

"In addition, they must know geology, geophysics, because they must know where the oil and gas reserves are underground, and how oil and gas moves," explains Prof Banik, stressing on the multidisciplinary nature of a petroleum engineer.

Further, each institute employs a unique method to help its students stand apart. "Students work on an MBA dissertation or thesis, a strong 250-page document which they start working on immediately after coming back from their internship. So for maybe the first six months they work on the framework, analysis and in some cases even the data collection and in the last semester they analyse, bring in models, do some forecasting etc. So it runs over the full second year and has eight credits. So, we have heavy research focus in our MBA," says Dr Diwan.

At PDPU, the focus is three-pronged: first students are made academically sound. Second, their skill development is taken care of. The third focus is on personality development, including character building.

"With respect to the knowledge aspect, we reviewed the curriculum last year and removed existing gaps. We offer various subjects to cover functional knowledge, domain knowledge and basic knowledge, too. Further, adequate electives are offered to enable students to specialise in the area of their choice from Finance, HR etc," says Prof Bhavesh Patel.

On further enquiry, one comes to know that the OD (Organisational Development) and OB (Organisational Behaviour) courses, as well as Communication Skills classes focus on skill development.  Hailing from India's premier B-school for HR and OB -- XLRI, Jamshedpur -- Prof Patel has evolved a unique methodology for students' personality development. "Students, on a voluntary basis, do community service in the nearby villages. We also have a labour colony on campus whom the students educate.

"Sensitivity to human issues is brought about by another programme because without this the manager is an incomplete manager. In this human sensitisation programme, they are in contact for some time with people who come in the 'have not' category, and try to understand their problems and help them continuously for two years," he explains.

Lectures, conferences and summits where students get a chance to interact with industry experts are, of course, more or less the norm across these institutes nowadays.

There are three main areas that a student can choose within petrochemical engineering to further his career:

Upstream
The upstream oil sector is also known as the exploration and production (E&P) sector. This includes searching for potential underground or underwater oil and gas fields, drilling of exploratory wells, and subsequently operating the wells that recover and bring the crude oil and/ or raw natural gas to the surface. And it also includes searching for new forms of energy like shale oil/ gas or oil from deep seabeds.

Midstream
This area of the sector processes, stores, markets and transports commodities such as crude oil, natural gas, natural gas liquids and sulphur.

Downstream
This involves the refining of crude oil and the selling and distribution of natural gas and products derived from crude oil. The downstream sector includes oil refineries, petrochemical plants, petroleum product distribution, retail outlets and natural gas distribution companies .

(Refer to Box for detailed listing of the varied profiles of a petrochemical engineer in the industry)

What you must study
While those with a BTech/ MTech typically stoke the operations arm of the petroleum companies, the management cadre comprising of Marketing, Finance and HR functions are increasingly being hired from the MBA batches of these institutes. "Of the 21 management trainees hired in our organisation this year, 20 come from such specialised institutes," says Manas Nanavati, a 2010 batch Petro-MBA and management trainee at Bharat Petroleum in Mumbai.

Being a technology-dominant industry, the traditional route of entry has been by getting a BTech or an MTech degree in any discipline of Petroleum Engineering. However, with petroleum institutes like PDPU, UPES and RGIPT opening up in the country, one can also get a specialised BBA or MBA in Oil and Gas sector to kickstart one's petro-career.

However, probing deeper, one finds that many of these MBAs have actually done engineering at their graduation level. For example, Manas happens to be a chemical engineer. Petroleum exploration, extraction, and processing is a very technology-intensive process and therefore skilled manpower intensive.

Worker level or unskilled people do not fit the bill and technical persons are required. Even if you are not in a technical job as such, a good understanding of the sector is required and a technical degree helps.

It is not only in the core Oil and Gas sector that petro-graduates are in demand. Another promising area is the IT companies with domain areas in Oil and Gas. Big IT companies like Wipro and TCS have verticals focussed on Oil and Gas, which is responsible for projects in these industries. They prefer people with IT knowledge and domain knowledge of the Oil and Gas sector.

Secondly, there are a lot of companies into design of offshore structure, offshore drillwell etc, which only petroleum engineers can do as they have these subjects covered in their curriculum unlike a civil or mechanical engineer. For example, L&T is a major company in this area. The remuneration, however, remains higher for the core technical jobs, in comparison to these allied opportunities.

Remuneration
"Last year, the average salary was around Rs 4.5 lakh with the highest salary being Rs 10 lakh for the MBA batch," says Prof Patel. Dr Diwan agrees that the BTech holders have an edge over the MBAs in placements as it is a technology-dominant industry.

Nihit Jain, senior officer, HR with Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC), shares that the Sixth Pay Commission made a significant difference to his pay packet. Nihit had joined GSPC in 2008 after completing his MBA-Oil and Gas.

Opportunities abroad
Another interesting fact to note is that 30 per cent of the petroleum engineers produced by India are working abroad. "The student preference is clearly for international companies like British Gas and Schlumburger, being in direct proportion to what they pay," says Dr Diwan. Obviously, the perks too are on the higher side.

The flipside
Though salaries are lucrative and the prospects are bright, the conditions in which one has to work in the field are often trying.

"We send students for a three-week rural internship programme right after the completion of the first year of their studies to acclimatise them to the harsh conditions, so as to prepare them well for a job in the demanding petroleum sector," says Prof Banik. It can be physically very demanding and social life is almost zilch.

You can expect to be at an offshore drilling site like Bombay High, or in the desert regions, or even the hilly terrain of the North East with little company. In fact, the sector seems to have something in common with the Merchant Navy -- the going is tough, but the tough laugh all the way to the bank.

Dr Parag Diwan, VC, UPES, Dehradun, talks about the value of an MBA degree in the sector and beyond...

What was the need to start a specialised Petroleum MBA?

From a university perspective, we wanted to build a holistic university with programmes to complement its technology programmes. As you know, technology alone is not sufficient; you need people who can manage the technology.

In our MBA programme, we bring a thorough understanding of the industry, starting with the legal and regulatory aspect of it, accounting issues, risk management issues, contracting issues, whichever the critical issues related to the industry. Those who do an MBA from our institute are aware about the issues that are unique to this sector.

Do you think there is enough demand from the petroleum industry to absorb all these students?

If you look at the placement data, demand is more than enough as of now. If you say that all the demand is from the Oil and Gas sector, it is not true. We have two to three banks coming to our campus, because many banks have a large portfolio of loans in the energy sector. Similarly, many management consulting firms who have a petroleum vertical come to recruit. And last year we also had IT companies like TCS coming to our campus to hire for their energy vertical. So the demand is very much there.

From your students, what percentage land up in the Oil and Gas sector and what percentage are in allied services like banks and IT firms?

From last year's placement data I would say 50 per cent go to the Oil and Gas sector directly and the other 50 per cent in the allied services like banking or IT or other support services.

Are Oil and Gas profiles high paying?

Yes and no. When we talk about the Oil and Natural gas sector, they are largely public sector companies with fixed pay structures. Very few of them go by the demand and supply scenario. There are however, some companies from the services side that are willing to pay substantially more because they are generally private sector companies.

What is your admission criteria?

We consider CAT scores to shortlist candidates for the interview and GDs. The CAT score cut-off is 84 percentile but without any sectional cut-off. However, we are in the process of reviewing the sectional cut-off criterion.

So every student specialises in Oil and Gas instead of Marketing, Finance etc?

The student has the opportunity to take up subjects from one or other areas like Marketing, Finance etc. But all subjects have a clear focus on the Oil and Gas sector. Even the degree awarded is MBA (Oil and Gas). We have recently started expanding into energy and infrastructure because the demand from the industry is coming for that but largely it is Oil and Gas.

Prof Bhavesh Patel, director, PDU Petroleum University, Gandhinagar (Gujarat), on the courses and prospects:

What is unique about an MBA - Petroleum that it warrants a dedicated institute to the sector?

In a sectoral MBA there are courses which are called domain knowledge courses which give them in depth domain knowledge. These are important because otherwise, like in the past, you hire a normal MBA, then acquaint him with the industry knowledge what is exploration, what is refinery and intricacies of that.

So that obviates this thing, if a person is joining this course, he has already made the choice of joining the Oil and Gas sector. So for the company:

a) The is a person who is inclined towards the industry and will not run away to the FMCG sector
b) They don't have to do extensive management training

How many students would you be teaching at a time in the Oil and Gas sector?

We have six to seven products including the BTech, MTech and the MBA Approx. 25 per cent of my whole capacity is in Oil and Gas. So, altogether I have 4,200 strength, so 800 people in different years of their studies are pursuing courses in the Oil and Gas sector.

Do all of them get placed in the Oil and Gas sector or do some of them go to the allied sectors?

Our institute is like a refinery with so many BTechs, so many MTechs and so many MBAs. Now the composition can vary depending on the prognosis of the industry four years down the line. So BTech takes four years of gestation and MTech/ MBA two years and we forecast accordingly that whether Upstream, Downstream or Gas are going to be on upswing or downswing and we keep the number accordingly.

So, all of them will be going into the Oil and Gas sector?

So far we have been successful in placing them in their various niches. We have been having 90-100 per cent placements. Initially it was 100 per cent, now it is 90-95 per cent.

What is the typical salary an MBA gets?

It ranges anything between Rs 8-10 lakh. Some of the BTech students, however, have got international offers of Rs 20 lakh. Of course, these are dollar denominated and outside the country.

So what is the typical profile of an MBA in the sector?

We also work on a unique philosophy which is called as the double competency philosophy. We prefer that the entrance to our MBA programmes are tech-oriented. If they want to be in Oil and Gas, we want them to be Chemical engineers, Instrumentation and Process, Electrical, Mechanical engineers so they have double competencies.

Therefore, 90 per cent of our batch would comprise engineers. So they use their basic competency of being an engineer and complement it with planning skills like how much to produce, how much gross margin to keep, what will be the outlay etc.