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Bertrand
SZYMKOWSKI
French citizen
Girassol FPSO vessel, Total Angola. Production
Support Engineer.
Qualified as an Engineer at Ecole des Mines
de Paris, majoring in Earth and Environmental
Sciences.
Began his career in Argentina then moved
to Angola (after a stint at Headquarters).
Sees oil development as nothing short of
a vocation.
As far back as I can remember, I’ve
always wanted to work in the oil industry.
My mother told me I started drawing flare
stacks when I was five! I chose my undergraduate
and postgraduate courses accordingly, and
naturally approached Total when I was looking
for a 16-month International Voluntary Service
job after qualifying.
A vocation.
That was how I wound up in Buenos Aires,
Argentina, working as Junior Process Engineer
at Total Austral. While I was there, an
onshore project in Aguada San Roque came
up. I was in Processes, but I managed to
get involved in some of the basic and in-depth
analyses, and stayed in the loop all the
way up to commissioning.
Then came the 2001 crisis, which threw procurement,
supply, transport and just about everything
else out the window. The work suddenly got
a lot tougher. It was a terrific learning
experience. All in all, I had a great time
in Argentina, professionally and personally
speaking.
That first experience was confirmation I
had chosen the right path. I applied for
a job with the Group (before even finishing
my mission). The Recruitment Department
got in touch, I went through a few more
interviews, and signed my contract. I spent
a few months longer in Argentina, and then
moved back to Paris to work in the Strategy
Department’s Processes Office. That’s
the standard route for a young engineer
(projects, processes, then operations).
At Processes, we were in charge of developing
treatment lines for preliminary projects,
and did some engineering design. I did some
engineering for the Baudroie Hylia platforms
that are going up in Gabon, for example.
Two opportunities
in Girassol, Angola.
After those two years, I was offered a job
on rotation shifts (four weeks on duty and
four weeks off) on Girassol, off the Angolan
coast. That was two opportunities in one.
First of all, it was an opportunity to experience
rotation-shift work, and frontline contact
with an oil battery. There, I could see
the tangible results of my work, and could
apply everything I had learnt thus far.
As things worked out, I also know my colleague
who takes over when I’m on my four
weeks’ leave. That’s important
to keep things flowing smoothly.
Second, Girassol is an impressive, complex
project. This FPSO (floating production,
storage, and offloading) barge is amazing.
There are 160 people working on it (and
up to 180 when it spikes), it is 300 metres
long and 50 metres wide, the tanks hold
2,000,000 barrels, it is operating in 1,300-metre-deep
waters and produces 250,000 barrels a day!
It’s broken a bunch of world records.
Coordination and
supporting production.
Basically, what a Production Support Engineer
does at Girassol is monitor production-performance
indicators, and suggest any ways of optimising
or streamlining the installations that might
make life easier for production staff. We
also analyse incidents and production shutdowns,
and decide on the necessary corrective measures.
If anybody wants to change anything, they
have to talk to us. And we liaise with Onshore
Production Support and with Production on
the barge. We also prepare the four-week
work schedule and update it on a weekly
basis.
Recently, a hiccup in the water-filtering
unit shut the whole injection unit down.
So we had to organise all the work to pinpoint
the cause of the incident and the corrective
measures until the installations were up
and running again.
I’ve been here for just under a year.
That’s nearly half way through. And
now I can tell you without a doubt in my
mind that I really feel at home with operations
and that this is where I want to stay long
term.
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