Engineer Shortage Threatens Energy Expansion

Turkmenistan has overstretched its resources by pledging to extract more oil and gas when it does not have enough trained professionals to meet the task, say NBCentralAsia observers.



The state fuel and energy development programme sets targets to up the extraction of gas by 20 per cent this year to 80 billion cubic metres, and oil by 15 per cent to 10,5 million tonnes.



At the moment, homegrown engineers are only trained at the Turkmen political institute and the Balkanabat oil development department, an offshoot of the former extramural branch of the Moscow Gubkin Oil and Gas Institute.



Not enough qualified engineers are coming out of these schools to cope with the country’s plans for a surge in geological exploration and extraction.



Russian diplomas have not been recognised in Turkmenistan since 2003 and Turkmen students have not taken part in any international exchanges since the late Nineties, as a result of an isolationist policy imposed by former president Sapurmarat Niazov, who died suddenly last December.



Two days after Turkmenistan agreed to recognise university diplomas from CIS countries on July 14, Russian universities began a recruiting campaign in Turkmenistan accepting applications from Turkmen students for oil and gas related courses.



Turkmen students will now be able to study in some of Russia’s best universities for professional energy sector training, including the IM Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas.



But NBCentralAsia experts say that even though Turkmenistan can now look forward to a new injection of Russian-trained oil and gas sector specialists, the state should train its own professionals in the future.



Those currently working in Turkmenistan’s oil and gas sector are mostly old-school Soviet professionals or unqualified locals trained by the foreign companies that develop the fields they work on.



“New deposits are being discovered, which require staff, and so foreign companies are forced to train professionals they need on location so that they work on them then,” said an observer based in Ashgabat.



Experts say that Turkmenistan’s extraction tools and methods are outdated and the sector desperately needs geologists, geophysicists and deep-sea drilling experts to develop the hard-to-reach Caspian deposits.



“The endless use of overland oil deposits will gradually lead to reserve depletion, so a curriculum for a new engineering programme [on sea drilling] should be prepared,” said an NBCentralAsia economic expert.



Engineers are only the beginning, he continues. Turkmenistan still needs a whole range of other professionals, such as managers, chemists, accountants, ecologists and lawyers.



Over a decade of declining standards in education will compound Turkmenistan’s shortage of energy professionals for some time yet, argues the observer based in Ashgabat.



Secondary school leavers who want to study in Russia will find it difficult to compete with graduates from other countries, given the lack of good teachers or systematic teaching methods in Turkmenistan, he says.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)