SHUT OUT No top oil jobs for Kiwis in pipeline

Immigration New Zealand is making inquiries into claims Kiwi workers have been passed over in favour of Europeans. By Steve Kilgallon.

Kiwi oil rig workers say they’ve been shut out of top jobs on a rig bound for the Taranaki coast – claiming all the senior roles were promised to European-based crew.

At least 18 jobs on the Chinese Oil Services (COSL) rig Prospector were advertised online in January. But internal circulars by the Chinese-owned, Norwegian-based COSL from as early as last June invited European staff to apply for 30 or more posts on the rig when it came to New Zealand.

The company has now applied for 64 work visas for overseas senior rig staff – leading to protests from trade unions and workers who weren’t recruited.

The Sunday News has spoken to four senior, experienced rig workers who replied to the advert but weren’t interviewed for roles that matched their skills and experience. The rig company and its recruiters said many Kiwi workers weren’t experienced on the specific type of rig.

None of the workers would be named for fear of blacklisting but one called it ‘‘blatant false advertising . . . a scam’’ and has complained to Immigration NZ and minister Iain Lees-Galloway.

Immigration NZ is talking to complainants. One man, a senior toolpusher with over three decades of experience, said he’d applied for a job on Prospector as he wanted to work closer to home. He was told others with more recent experience got the jobs.

‘‘Kiwis apply for these jobs, even pay to update all their certificates, and don’t get the jobs – what these adverts are for is to they can go along to Immigration NZ and say ‘we advertised, and we got nobody suitable’.

‘‘I believe it is arrogance from their HR department in Norway: they perceive themselves as far superior to us out here and they don’t want us working on their rig. They only want to use Kiwis for the grunts, and bring the brains in from elsewhere.

‘‘If lots of other Kiwis got the jobs, I would have no complaint – the best man won, and I’m not against companies being able to choose who they wish. If it was an open and honest selection process, I would have no argument.’’

An experienced driller said he applied for a job matching his experience, confirmed he was a New Zealand citizen, then heard

nothing further.

One experienced Kiwi rig electrician working offshore said he’d heard nothing about his application, apart from receiving an acknowledgement.

Another driller said he applied for an assistant driller’s position – a step down from his current role and he’d worked with the systems to be used on the rig for over a decade. ‘‘I called [COSL’s employment agency] Atlas . . . they seemed disinterested when I spoke to them on the phone. After that I emailed my CV but never got a reply.’’

Immigration NZ general manager Peter Elms said internally advertising roles would ‘‘raise some concerns for us – we would have to be absolutely satisfied any subsequent advertisement and recruitment process had been fair’’.

The circular, from then-COSL chief executive Jorge Arnesen, announced the Prospector contract and said ‘‘in order to execute this contract in a safe and professional manner, COSL will also mobilise experienced key personnel from the North Sea’’. It asked candidates to email the HR director, Osvald Borgen. Another email said the company needed ‘‘about 30 key personnel . . . to manage the operations’’, listing the roles – many of them similar to those in the online ad.

COSL already has a rig in New Zealand, called Boss. It similarly advertised roles for that rig on job website Seek, and ended up with 37 overseas crew and 66 Kiwis.

Borgen admitted there was an internal application process for candidates to take the rig to New Zealand and set it up but that process required ‘‘rig-specific knowledge and competence, and not nationality’’.

‘‘To operate a highly advanced rig in an area like New Zealand represents a huge responsibility to any rig owner.’’

Several senior roles would come from COSL staff because ‘‘there is no other way’’. He said 46 of the 63 staff on the rig at any time would be locals and the company would commit to hiring more into senior roles.