Attended a Career Talk

It's not often that you get a company from Brunei coming over to the UK to give career talks to students. In fact, this might be the first times I've seen a Bruneian company doing recruitment in the UK. I've always had a certain envy towards the recruitment drives you see from companies from neighbouring countries. By coming to the UK, it shows that the company is serious about recruitment and it has come to the country with the highest concentration of Bruneian scholars (i think).

Since this was by a industry I am involved in, it didn't take too long for me to decide to pop down. A large number of questions and opinions also started forming after I've read the 'facebook invites' (we can't live without facebook anymore huh).

So I was in London this afternoon for a career talk by Petroleum Brunei (PB). To be honest, when I was deciding whether to go, it felt a bit weird, especially considering my position. Nevertheless, as a Bruneian with an interest in the developmental issues of Brunei, I thought it'd be interesting to have an idea of what and how the industry is doing at the moment.

The talk started off with the PB personnels editing their powerpoint slides, with the projector display. I thought that was not very professional. Okay, they might have been short of time, but it looks really bad to be editing the venue and date of a recycled powerpoint slide in front of your audience.

Other than that, they started off being quite relaxed. Their tones were humble and honest, making it very clear that they are small and without any oil production at this point in time. They also highlighted their urgent need for subsurface human resource. It was clear that they are a small company - a national petroleum company starting 30 years late behind national oil companies of our neighbours.

However, as a citizen of the country, it was comforting to hear that there are unexplored blocks - meaning we can keep our fingers crossed that more oil might be discovered. It was also informative to have an idea of the time frame, giving an idea of how much the current facilities/reserves can last. Of course it brings about the urgency of the matter. I don't see that very often in Brunei, so in some way, I see it as a positive sign.

I enjoyed the talk because I got to ask as many questions as I wanted to - and they answered it in the most honest manner they could, which i appreciated. It was also interesting that PB has huge aspirations for a company of its size. That however means creating opportunities for Bruneians. While the dominant player in the industry limits itself to the Exploration and Production (E&P) business, PB has hopes for downstream businesses too. This is of course good news for chemical engineers because they fuel the downstream activities, as opposed to the E&P business where the majority of the expenses are dominated by the subsurface people.

I managed to have a good chat with the chief petroleum engineer who coincidentally used to work around the same workplace two summers ago. It took a while before it hit me who he was. It was in fact his fervour persuasion to convert chemical engineers to petroleum/reservoir engineers that reminded who he was! I managed to raise a few points which I thought was slightly pushing it a bit but the MD was very open to discussions and ideas. I was quite impressed with that but of course I should remind myself that it's a recruitment event and reality works with a different mechanism.

In short, I would say that it is a small, growing company with large aspirations, huge potential. Overall very impressed.