Hunting and Developing New Talents

Kingsley Ojoh¹, Anthony Abolarin¹, and Jacques Estival^2
1 TOTAL, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
² TOTAL, Paris, France

TOTAL's oil and gas production capacity in Nigeria is expected to triple reaching more than 600,000 b/d and 700MM scf/d of gas in the next five years. In anticipation of these growth projections and capacity building challenges, TOTAL has embarked on an ambitious Human Capital and Sustainable Development projects targeted at young Geoscientists and Engineers.

Late 2001, TOTAL commenced a Talent Hunt program in the Geosciences within Nigeria covering most of the Universities in the country. This resulted in the selection of top young candidates, for employment and scholarship awards for postgraduate studies abroad. Since 1995, in collaboration with the French Embassy, Nigeria, the program has produced two Ph.D. Geophysics graduates and a Reservoir Engineer from IFP/Texas A&M.

TOTAL has also established the Institute of Petroleum Studies in Port Harcourt as a key Sustainable Development project, in partnership with the renowned Institut Francais du Petrole (IFP) in Paris in conjunction with the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The objective of IPS is to train locally to international industry standards. The rigorously selected pioneer 20 students of IPS, commenced the inaugural session in November 2003.

These local efforts are fully coherent with TOTAL's manpower developmental policy. A project called "Training Passport" has been launched for the training of nationals. The young employees follow a personalised training program combining on-the-job-training and classroom training, to upgrade their competency level to the TOTAL international standards. Close to 50 Nigerians are currently on international exchange programs in our technology and project centers in Europe and the Far East. They are being developed through the acquisition of specialised skills that should enhance future oil and gas reserves growth from successes in exploration and production.