Hiring more women could ease oil firms' skills gap

By Jane Merriman

LONDON (Reuters) - Recruiting and retaining more women by setting quotas could help big international oil and gas firms cope with a severe shortage of skilled staff in future, a senior executive at Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) said.

"A wasted potential resource in the industry is women," said Lynda Armstrong, vice president technical solutions at Shell International Exploration and Production.

Armstrong, speaking at a seminar during International Petroleum Week in London, said women were typically under-represented in the technical side of the oil business and one way to address this was to introduce official quotas.

"I'm in favour of official quotas, which make you look at who else could get a particular job," she said. "It is stupid in my view to ignore half the workforce."

The skills shortage in oil and gas has already been widely flagged.

Downsizing and lack of recruitment into the energy sector during the 1980s, with large sections of the industry's workforce now rapidly approaching retirement, have contributed to the looming staff shortage.

The oil and gas sector also has to change its image, as an environmentally-unfriendly industry that has limited long-term prospects, to attract new talent.

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