Resh­ma Ra­goonath

En­er­gy Cham­ber pres­i­dent Roger Pack­er says the new­ly opened Na­tion­al En­er­gy Skills Cen­tre (NESC) Drilling Acad­e­my is a dream come true for the lo­cal en­er­gy sec­tor which is cur­rent­ly fac­ing a labour short­age.Speak­ing at the of­fi­cial open­ing of the $18.8 mil­lion state-of-the-art fa­cil­i­ty at Ste Madeleine on Mon­day night, Pack­er said it of­fered young peo­ple an op­por­tu­ni­ty to gain skills for em­ploy­ment in a high pay­ing sec­tor.

"Young peo­ple from the sec­ondary school lev­el, with three to five O'lev­els...those young peo­ple can get high pay­ing jobs and can move away from crime. "With 12 rigs in the coun­try there are lots of op­por­tu­ni­ties," he said.

Pack­er con­grat­u­lat­ed Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Fazal Karim for his vi­sion in set­ting up the train­ing fa­cil­i­ty. He said the Drilling Acad­e­my presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty for stu­dents to mar­ket them­selves lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. He added that T&T al­ready had a rep­u­ta­tion which was sec­ond to none in the glob­al en­er­gy in­dus­try and "what we have to do is re-es­tab­lish that".

Pack­er said the Drilling Acad­e­my came at an op­por­tune time for the lo­cal in­dus­try:"In 2010 we had one off shore rig op­er­at­ing in Trinidad and two land rigs op­er­at­ing in Trinidad," he said."We are now up to six and sev­en off shore rigs in Trinidad and maybe four or five on land, so this is the high­est lev­el of ac­tiv­i­ty in Trinidad in 30-plus years."He called for a sec­ond acad­e­my be es­tab­lished in south Trinidad since a sin­gle fa­cil­i­ty "will not be able to sat­is­fy the need to be filled lo­cal­ly."

"The sec­ond acad­e­my (should be) sit­u­at­ed in south Trinidad around where all the rigs are op­er­at­ing, that would be my dream," Pack­er said.En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said the Drilling Acad­e­my had opened at a good time since the up­stream in­dus­try had been rein­vent­ed by gov­ern­ment and is set for growth. He said drilling ac­tiv­i­ty had in­creased eight-fold in re­cent months, with eight rigs cur­rent­ly drilling in wa­ters off Trinidad and more in­volved in land drilling ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ram­nar­ine said ac­tiv­i­ty in the en­er­gy sec­tor was set to con­tin­ue in­to the next decade since eight more pro­duc­tion-shar­ing con­tracts to­talling US $1.9 bil­lion had been signed.

Al­so speak­ing at the of­fi­ci­ual cer­e­mo­ny was Petrotrin chair­man Lind­say Gillette who said the en­er­gy com­pa­ny was ag­gres­sive­ly pur­su­ing ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion over the next five years and would need the skilled per­son­nel who would grad­u­ate from the school. He said the state-owned com­pa­ny was faced with an age­ing work­force and needs more skilled labour.

Com­ment­ing on the lo­ca­tion of the fa­cil­i­ty at Ste Madeleine, once a vi­brant hub of the sug­ar in­dus­try, Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Fazal Karim said with its open­ing "we have moved from the cane fields to the brain fields".Karim said the T&T Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil will seek to have the Drilling Acad­e­my's in­dige­nous train­ing pro­gramme ac­cred­it­ed with the In­ter­na­tion­al Drillers As­so­ci­a­tion.The fa­cil­i­ty will have its first in­take of stu­dents in Jan­u­ary.