Three years back, an MBA in petroleum studies from Dubai or Singapore was enough for a candidate to automatically enter the higher echelons of management at an oil and gas company, considering people with such a specialised degree was a rarity in India.

Not anymore. Oil firms are proactively joining hands with the government to set up petroleum universities, which could cater to the high demand specialised engineers and managers for the sector.

Take for instance, the recently launched Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University (PDPU) at Gandhinagar, promoted by the Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation.

The university has received support from Mukesh Ambani. Ambani has accepted the post of the university's first president and promised to help it become the world's top university soon.

Probably the first university in India to offer a wide variety of disciplines exclusively in the energy sector, the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun, has managed get CMDs and MDs of companies such as Hindustan Petroleum, Bharat Petroleum Corp, Indian Oil [Get Quote] Corp and Petronet LNG [Get Quote] on its governing council.

Encouraged by the response to these educational institutions, the government has decided to set up the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology, which would become functional from academic year 2008-2009.

The university would be set up at an estimated cost of Rs 435 crore (Rs 4.35 billion), with Rs 285 crore (Rs 2.85 billion) in budgetary support and Rs 150 crore (Rs 1.5 billion) coming from the Oil Industry Development Board.

What this means is that from next year onwards, around 600-700 students armed with bachelor and master degrees in engineering and management studies could be knocking the doors of major oil and gas companies in India.

These companies have been facing a steady shortage of qualified personnel at higher levels.

In a recent study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers for Petrofed, the gap between the availability and requirement of trained manpower in India is projected to be about 36,000 by 2019, and the existing institutes may not be adequate to meet the increasing requirement of technical manpower in the petroleum sector.

Such is the proactiveness shown by the industry towards the petroleum courses that unlike other institutes where faculty shortage is a big problem, companies have started assigning officials to interact with students and provide lectures as visiting faculty on a regular basis.  

"Being a niche sector, procurement of quality faculty members was looked upon as a challenge to the university when it announced its curriculum, but it has already recruited 25 permanent faculty members and got around 25-30 visiting faculty members for the first batch of students, most of them from the industry," said a source at PDPU. 

He added that government and corporate support has ensured the participation of around five foreign industry experts who have already addressed the students.

Honing skills of future honchos

• Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University is the first university in India to offer a wide variety of disciplines exclusively in the energy sector.
• Oil and gas companies are proactively joining hands with the government to set up petroleum universities, which could cater to the high demand for petroleum engineers and managers.
• The government has decided to set up the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology, which would be functional from academic year 2008-2009