SEVEN local graduate engineers have arrived in Singapore for hands-on training on the Prosperity floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, which is being constructed to support the Payara development project in the Stabroek Block, offshore Guyana.

According to a press release from ExxonMobil, the engineers were sent to Singapore as part of an overarching effort to boost the capacity of Guyanese to cater to the growing demands within the oil and gas sector.

The five men and two women, who are employed with SBM Offshore, arrived in Singapore on Monday. In August, last year, they travelled to the Netherlands where they spent six months undergoing training in different areas, while also working with the team designing the vessel.

The graduate engineers returned to Guyana in February before the final stint of training.

This programme which is geared towards building and developing key competencies needed in the local petroleum industry is a model project that seeks to train, prepare and empower young Guyanese for promising careers in the country’s oil and gas sector.

“While in the Netherlands, we were placed into different departments; we worked with engineers on drawings and so on. In Singapore, we will be more focused on construction,” one of the engineers, Tanisha Selby, said.

Her colleague, Kishaun Lall, spoke about his expectations for the Singapore leg.

“That is where the real excitement is I would say, the construction aspect of it. Being a civil engineer by profession, it would definitely pique my interest to see how all these large modules are being constructed, the different processes a company like SBM Offshore would use on an international scale compared to what we have in Guyana,” Lall said.

The other graduate engineers are Malik Lewis, Raymond Luckhoo, Paula Ceres, Daniel Troyer, and Andy Sattan. They were recruited from the University of Guyana in 2021 after undergoing a rigorous vetting process.

SBM Offshore has said it intends to repeat the programme given how well it has been going and the clear benefits being derived.

At the conclusion of the 18-month programme, the graduates are to be fully immersed in the company’s Guyana operations, in roles that they are firstly most interested in, and secondly, which fit their background and areas of training.