Polish Shales Require More Than Capital and Equipment

Poland’s embryonic shale gas industry is hampered by many shortages. Concession operators are now puzzling out where they’ll get the huge amounts of water, sand and equipment necessary—if the geology is just right—to eventually drill the thousands of wells needed to get shale gas production running in Poland.

But when it comes to another shortage, of human capital, companies such as Chevron or Talisman Energy, are even now trying to tap another reach seam—Poland’s diaspora of scientists and engineers.

Unlike in many industries, such as management consulting or commercial banking, young, ambitious graduates of Poland’s mining academies haven’t had many job opportunities in the home country for the past 15 years. Companies like Deloitte or KPMG, or international law firms, recruit pretty much continuously in Poland. Fifteen years ago is when the western oil majors pulled out of Poland, seeing that Polish gas monopoly PGNiG had a lock on hydrocarbon extraction in the country and was handling it quite well, according to a participant of the Shale Gas World 2010 conference taking place at the Hyatt in Warsaw Wednesday and Thursday.

So graduates with oil and gas-focused degrees, especially from the prestigious AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow, tended to pack up their bags and move to wherever their skills would be useful, be it Alberta, Texas, Alaska, or Saudi Arabia. Now concession operators, as well as the services companies that work for them such as Halliburton, are working hard to tempt at least some of them back.

AGH alumni are especially coveted thanks to the university’s specialization in oil and gas. Executives at the shale gas conference in Warsaw said it’s still challenging to convince these Poles living abroad to abandon everything—jobs they know, houses, friends—and relocate their families to Poland, especially as many still fear that the hullabaloo about shale gas in Poland is a flash in the pan and that they’ll have to move back again in a few years.

The only thing concession operator recruiters can do to alleviate this fear is for their companies to continue to invest in Poland, drill wells, and generally continue to do the work that could prove their hunches right.

Source: Wall Street Journal