Training Rig Hands in the People's Republic of China

Abstract

Abstract For an oilfield service company to survive in the important markets of the developing countries, it must replace expatriate personnel with qualified local nationals. This is necessary to cut costs and meet the nationalization and technology transfer requirements of host nations. An effective training program is essential to meet these requirements while at the same time maintaining international standards of service quality and safety. This paper explores the lessons learned by one such training effort — the China Nanhai-Oxy-Sedco Drilling Corporation (CNOSDC) Training Center, located in the Shekou Industrial Zone in mainland China just north of Hong Kong. It discusses some of the problems encountered by our program, and analyses a set of factors which we have found to be significant in making our recruitment and training of Chinese workers more effective. We believe these factors can be used by other service companies and operators to better select their Chinese personnel and expedite their training. We examine the results of three years of training of seventy-two Chinese employees considering the impact of home province, age, language abilities, educational background and previous work experience upon each man's success or failure. We go on to address questions beneficial to all oil companies and service contractors working in China and other developing nations: Chinese from some geographic areas or provinces tend to fail while those from other areas do quite well. Why is this the case? How can you identify these areas in your company's recruitment efforts? Some technical schools produce students with a markedly higher chance of failure in our training program, while other schools have produced trainees who do consistently well. Why? College graduates have a high rate of success and a high rate of promotion, but also one of the highest rates of failure. Why is there such a high rate of failure among trainees with college degrees? What kind of Chinese colleges produce trainees most likely to succeed in the oilfield? Motivation, or the lack of it, is decisive in training success and failure. How can key motivational factors be identified and utilized? Are these motivational factors different in China than in the West ?