Skills part of a strategic agenda

AS IN many other areas of industry, the ability to recruit—and retain—top-quality people in the oil and gas business, to rejuvenate an ageing workforce and secure the pool of skills needed to sustain operations is critically important, writes Annette Thomas. After nearly 40 years of commercial development, the North Sea basin is mature and its future will predominantly involve the exploitation of smaller and more complex fields, presenting greater technical risks at a time when global competition for limited capital and resources is on the rise. Yet only just over half of the UK's known oil and gas resources have been produced. That leaves significant volumes to be recovered—potentially up t