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OFFSHORE EUROPE, Aberdeen—The oil industry’s latest drive into the developing world is being sped along by online interactive training of a sort learned by iPhone, podcast and computer terminal.

A handful of companies offering the large supplier-contractors —Weatherfords, Aker Solutions, Modecs — have used modern communications technology to put the industry’s shrinking number of trainers into classrooms training oilfield plant staff worldwide.

Now, as the oil and gas industry enters what looks like a creeping new boom-time after a year of cuts, finding ways to expand again quickly has become paramount. Developing world technicians are most sought after, since much exploration and production has shifted to Asia and Latin America in recent years.

“With our training, you can train from one to 20,000 at one time and then retrain them as often as they need it with limited costs,” said Kevin Keable, managing director of Oilennium Online Interactive Learning.

His company has 3,000 trainees around the world online at any given time, and growth has been explosive. In Ghana, where Modec is getting ready to deploy a floating production storage and offloading vessel for Tullow Oil, Oilennium’s client is the Ghana Oilfield Training Centre.

“They can log onto my White Board learning presentation,” Keable explained, “and they can ask questions online in real time”.

Afterwards, he or his supply-chain clients can test the knowledge of technician aspirants around the world. Students not employing a computer get touch pads to answer quiz questions, and test results can be monitored from his clients’ human resources headquarters.

Weatherford is a big client. While a shortage of experienced trainers is the plague of the industry, the company has been able to narrow the skills gap, fulfill local content rules and speed expansion with learning modules from Keable’s company.

Trainees logging on are first immersed in oilfield health and safety before being trained as technicians. Training Russians and Brazilians as technicians and supervisors able to safely master valve shut-downs and changes are key to meeting the mass workforce requirements for new plant in Brazil and Russia.

Even without new energy giants, Oliennium’s growth has been explosive. Keable, with experience in the oilfield supply chain, admits two years ago he sat alone in his study with his one employee.

Now his company is 14-strong, growing and taking on heavyweights from Norway and Aberdeen — plus the 107 million “hits” that come with a Google search of “online training”.

Oliennium’s success has been his clients’: Weatherford trains on Oilennium modules to train cadres from North Africa to Singapore and Yemen. It’s not just the developing world, nor is it just product.

“We don’t just have multimedia people like some of our competitors. We have oil and gas people, and we can get a lot of people trained fast,” Keable added.

And with so many to be trained, and with some trainees afraid of classrooms, online interactive learning is the hope of an industry speeding to recovery as oil’s price rises.

“I think classroom training is rapidly falling away,” said Keable.

As we left him at Aberdeen’s Offshore Europe 2009 tradeshow and conference, Keable flashed us an I-phone screen. In seconds, we learned the right way to change a valve.

Tags: Oilennium Ltd