Santos says Australia needs foreign labour for energy projects

Santos chief executive David Knox says Australia needs to use foreign skilled labour to meet the planned development of energy projects in the years ahead.

“This is not about a push to bring in cheap, unskilled workers from overseas,” Knox told the Australian Institute of Energy’s national conference in Sydney on Monday. “The scale, speed and effort involved in building major projects demand more talent, skills and resources than our population can hope to deliver.

“To successfully address this skills challenge, we need to open our minds as a nation and realise that there is no skills shortage if we truly do see ourselves as part of Asia. Skills and talent are plentiful in our region and we are well positioned to take advantage of it. We simply have to give ourselves the permission and realise that opening up as a nation has its true advantages.”

Knox said the lack of skilled labour, shortage of experienced subcontractors and dearth of specialist suppliers was one of the biggest contributors to cost inflation in Australia.

Knox said Australia was not a monopoly producer of gas, given suppliers in Canada, East Africa and the United States were also competing to sell gas to the emerging nations of Asia.

As such, Australia needed to maintain its cost competitiveness, “so that new projects are sanctioned to meet both Asian and domestic demand,” he said.

“Without these additional projects going ahead, new investment in Australia’s LNG (liquefied natural gas) industry will dry up in 2017,” Knox said.

Source: AAP