The oil and gas automation sector is suffering from a skills shortage, according to Honeywell Process Solutions President Vimal Kapur, writes Andreas Exarheas from Rigzone.

• The work being undertaken today is more complex than in the past
• A lot of people who manage the current fleet of control systems in the industry are either retiring or on the brink of retirement
• Companies are increasingly being asked to work with fewer people

“You put the three together: we are supposed to have less people who are likely to be inexperienced and they need to lead with complex technology,” Kapur said in his speech.

“It’s a pretty deep challenge, which has to be managed,” he added.

Lack of Standardization Raising Costs

In another observation of the oil and gas industry, Kapur outlined that capital expenditures in the field could be slashed through standardizing elements of the process sector.

“Capital spend on projects continues to be a challenge,” Kapur said at the conference.

“Why does capital spend go higher? One of the biggest takeaways is that there’s a lack of standardization in the process industry … every plant is custom built,” he added.

Kapur also added that oil and gas field developments in the EMEA region and LNG developments in Asia have overrun massively on estimate costs, increasing from original estimates by several hundred billion dollars.(source: Rigzone)