Seadrill is a leading offshore deepwater drilling company with a workforce of 7,900 people from 50 nations, and it operates in 15 countries on five continents.
Total annual travel spend: US$65 million Annual number of air tickets: 58,500
“We move 160 people per day to 48 rigs – failure is very expensive,” says Derek Massie, senior vice president of human resources at Seadrill. “Before 2011 we had more than 25 travel providers, no reporting, no measurements and little control; now, we have one global travel management company.”
Advice on travel policies and expectations in the oil and gas industry:
• You won’t please all the people all the time.
IT’S A GAS GAS GAS…
ATPI group sales director Adam Knights talks about his experience in the oil and gas industry
The logistics of managing travel in this sector can be incredibly multifaceted and truly global. We have a booking team in Aberdeen but we may not even look at booking any UK travel at times, even though our clients are based here. We may have to get a crew
of deck handlers from a logistics company in Manila in the Philippines, as well as cooks and chefs from India, and fly them to a deep-sea oil vessel in Angola. Not only that, we may have to get the geophysicist on site from Texas and the engineer from Wales. The client will want this
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all together in one travel management plan. They want local pricing of flights, not everything booked out of the UK. We then have to access prices in the Philippines and India. Luckily, we have offices there to do that kind of thing. Oil and gas companies operate global businesses that act locally and they expect the same from their travel providers.
essential at all levels. “Agents have to know the fares market and ensure easy access to a wide range of them, including those that are offshore,” explains Jackie Kjos, senior account manager at Giles Travel.
SAFETY AND SECURITY It is likely that the oil and gas sector was tracking its business travellers more extensively and routinely before any other sector, since safety and security is paramount in this business.
• Everybody wants business class but no one wants to pay for it.
• Emotional travel experience is a factor for employee retention.
• Make sure your policy is as clear and transparent as possible.
• Ensure your policy is fit for your market.
• There are cultural challenges – for example, in Asia and France it is very hierarchy-driven, while Scandinavia is more egalitarian and socialistic.
We aren’t giving up fossil fuels anytime soon, so it’s an industry with a bright outlook
Many have traveller tracking systems in-house; others rely on their travel supplier. “We have seen an increase in the number of clients requiring support in either tracking using a traveller’s booking reference number or passenger name record, or utilising a web-based system,” explains Kjos. “This is probably due to the increase in travel to more hostile areas.” Inevitably, there’s a large amount
of traveller traffic to high-risk areas, whether it be the Niger Delta or outside of Angola’s capital Luanda – as a result, expertise beyond normal international corporate travel is required on both the buyer and supplier side. This sector, as one travel buyer put it, “is like no other industry in the world”. Multi-faceted logistical issues with tight deadlines and frequent booking changes are common, as are complex itineraries with multi-
sector flights. There can be urgent visa requests at short notice, where agents will have to meet-and-greet clients at the airport to hand over visa documentation on a regular basis. Anyone operating in travel in the oil and gas industry must understand the energy business as a whole, because it impacts many areas of interest, from health and safety to human resources, finance and recruitment. Suppliers and buyers must get to grips with many of the internal workings of an energy company’s business operations not only around the world, but within the company structure, too. “The scope of a travel programme in the oil and gas sector may be beyond that of a traditional corporate programme,” says JP Peplinski, vice- president of CWT Energy Services. “Good communication is key.” Yet anyone investing in business
travel in the oil and gas sector, whether it’s getting the Houston executive to an Indonesian oilfield or a Bangladeshi crew to Abidjan, will be rewarded. We aren’t giving up fossil fuels anytime soon, so it’s an industry with a bright outlook. ■