skills shortage to hit coal miners

8500 new jobs, but how many for Queenslanders? CAMERON ATFIELD
March 27, 2010 - 5:00AM



WorldEnergyResearch.com

A skills shortage in the emerging Queensland Coal Seam Gas and Liquefied Natural Gas industry would require employers to look overseas to fill many of the top jobs, according to industry sources.

On Wednesday, a $60 billion deal was between BG Group and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, which was heralded by Premier Anna Bligh as the world's biggest LNG contract based on coal seam gas.

Ms Bligh said the project, if it passed environmental scrutiny from the federal government, would create "up to 8500" jobs in Queensland.

But the announcement has had the industry asking where the skilled workers will come from.

Australian Industry Group Queensland director Chris Rodwell said he expected many of the high-end technical jobs to be sourced overseas, as there were more available jobs than qualified Australian workers to fill them.

"If you have those backgrounds in engineering and related sciences and those trade and technical skills, we certainly have significant shortages in Australia," he said.

"It will therefore require a good look overseas for those skills, and it also means we have to look at what investment we're making at both the state and federal level in the development of those skills from the ground up."

Mr Rodwell said employers should overseas in the short term to source the required skilled workforce while they were still being .

"We should certainly be looking at strategies to market Australia as a destination for those appropriate skill bases and in that respect we should particularly be looking at Europe," he said.

"The longer-term prospects for that region are not looking as positive as perhaps they are elsewhere in the world."

Queensland Resources Council chief executive Michael Roche while many skills were transferable, the challenge facing industry was the "sheer quantum" of people needed.

"If you had to, under the high growth scenarios, find an extra 1500 to 2000 drilling technicians in the next five to 10 years, that is going to be challenging," he said.

Mr Roche said the LNG sector would need anywhere from 400 to 800 engineers to keep up with growth.

"We don't have that supply of petroleum engineers - we don't even teach petroleum engineering in Queensland universities," he said.

"So for some of these skills sets in the early days, we will need to import some specialist people, but we really need to be quickly gearing up the training system across those technical skills."

A spokesman for Queensland Gas Company, a subsidiary of BG Group, said they were working with the Queensland government to help meet the jobs demand locally.

"We do expect shortages in some positions, such as geologists, maintenance technicians, electrical technicians and petroleum and mechanical engineers," he said.

The QCG spokesman said they were promoting coal seam gas to the regional LNG industry as a career proposition.

"Initiatives include establishing a careers advisory centre, skills development, work readiness programs and industry traineeships, apprenticeships and cadetships," he said.

"We hope that through these initiatives we can develop QGC as an employer of choice for local residents to assist in the development in a skilled local workforce."

Last week, Premier Anna Bligh announced a $10 million training program, jointly funded by government and industry, to train the workers needed for the emerging Queensland industry.

"If Queenslanders are to see the full benefits of the opportunities this new industry will create we need to make sure they can develop the skills they need to harness the boom," she said.

"The eight proposed CSG-LNG projects under consideration across the state will generate unprecedented demand for workers with specific technical skills.

"It's essential that our training system is geared to meet industry demand - that's why we're developing this program hand in hand with industry."

Energy Skills Queensland chief executive officer Glenn Porter said the unique nature of the CSG-LNG industry meant people needed to acquire the right skills as soon as possible if they were have a career in Queensland.

"The extraction of coal seam gas is a cleaner process than coal which produces a cleaner fuel, and it's relatively new technology," he said.

"That means we need to start finding people who want to work as process operations technicians, drilling technicians, engineers and a host of other occupations in career opportunities that are about to start appearing across Queensland."