PETROLEO Brasileiro SA, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, plans to add 14,000 engineers, geologists and drillers within three years as it develops the biggest crude discovery in the Western Hemisphere since 1976.
Petrobras, as the company is known, plans to expand its workforce 23 percent to about 74,000, surpassing Chevron Corp, the second-largest US oil producer, Bloomberg News reported. The hiring binge is part of a US$112.7 billion expansion that may allow Brazil to overtake the output of all OPEC members except Saudi Arabia.
Skilled workers
Petrobras lacks the roughnecks, or rig workers, and other staff needed to tap billions of barrels that lie in the offshore oil finds. The company is trying to hire more than a dozen people a day amid intensifying competition after crude prices surged to a record around the globe.
"If some of the hypotheses are true and we have very, very, very large reserves, then probably we are going to face some constraints on personnel," Chief Executive Officer Jose Sergio Gabrielli said in a May 5 interview in Houston.
Petrobras said this week that it will begin pumping oil by April 2009 at its Tupi field 250km off the Atlantic coast, a year ahead of schedule. The field may hold 8 billion barrels of recoverable oil, Rio de Janeiro-based Petrobras said in November, the hemisphere's biggest petroleum find since Mexico's Cantarell field was discovered.
Production at the nearby Carioca deposit may begin in four to five years, Gabrielli said in the interview. A Brazilian regulator said last month that Carioca may hold 33 billion barrels of crude, which would make it the largest field outside the Middle East. Petrobras said it will take at least three months of drilling to evaluate Carioca.
Tupi and seven other fields in the same region of the Atlantic are central to Gabrielli's plan to boost production by 79 percent to the equivalent of 4.2 million barrels of crude a day by 2015. Output at that level would put Petrobras on par with Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp, the world's biggest energy company.
Futures record
Petrobras has risen 28 percent in Sao Paulo trading since announcing the Tupi discovery in November. Over the same period, a Standard & Poor's index of major US producers has climbed 7.6 percent. Oil futures reached a record US$122.73 a barrel yesterday in New York.
Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Saudi Arabia's state oil company are also accelerating hiring as more oil production moves into deep oceans and harsh environments that require more advanced technology, said Dan McSpirit, an analyst who covers the oil industry for BMO Capital Markets in Denver.
"There's a shortage of good talent," McSpirit said.
San Ramon, California-based Chevron employed 65,000 people in late 2007. Exxon Mobil had 80,800.
Petrobras intends to recruit all of its new employees from Brazilian universities and technical schools, said Gabrielli, a trained economist.