Working offshore, hard but good salary

Working offshore, hard but good salary

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Working on offshore oil fields might not be everyone's idea of fun. They have to stay on an elevated oil platform for weeks to extract oil and gas far away from home in the middle of the sea.

But, thousands of people in the country's oil and gas industry are happy to do so.

Money is their primary motive.

"I'll work here for about 10 years to earn a lot of money. Afterwards, I want to work normally on land," an oil worker, who requested anonymity, told The Jakarta Post, during a recent visit to a foreign-owned offshore oil facility in the Java Sea.

The worker said that a fresh high school graduate working on an offshore field is paid about Rp 3 million (US$337) a month.

A high-school graduate, who has been working for ten years, can earn between Rp 7.5 million and Rp 11 million a month.

A local university graduate can earn between Rp 5 million and Rp 8.5 million a month to begin with, and after working for ten years their monthly salary rises to between Rp 19 million and Rp 22.5 million, he added.

This is quite a lot compared to the starting monthly salary of Rp 1.5 million paid by other industries to fresh IT graduates -- who are among the highest paid nowadays.

While local people working offshore earn more than enough, the salary given to foreigners is much higher. A platform supervisor, who has worked for years and is responsible for the operation of the platform, earns $750 per day or $22,500 a month, according to the oil worker.

An American oil worker, who has been working for almost 35 years, also admitted that money was his prime motive.

"My salary can support my family in the U.S. But, I also like the job," he said.

He said when he got a month off, he always returned to his country to see his family.

Offshore oil workers have several kinds of working time: some work for two weeks and get one week off, some work for one week and get one week off, and others work one month and get one month off. But they all work 12 hours a day.

They are all front men in the country's oil and gas industry, which is now the major financial contributor to the government's budget.

Their salaries are paid by the government under the cost of recovery scheme. State oil and gas firm Pertamina is assigned by the government to supervise the country's oil and gas contractors in making their expenditure, including salary expenses for the workers. All the expenditures must be approved by Pertamina.

Some people have criticized Pertamina for allowing oil and gas contractors to pay high salaries for their workers -- which, they say, has resulted in a decrease in the government's net income from the sector. Last year, the government earned about Rp 75 trillion from the oil and gas sector.

Among them is legislator Yosep Umarhadi of the Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI-P) faction, who insists that the salary received by foreign workers is too high and should be cut.

He said foreign workers account for five percent of total workers in the country's oil and gas industry but their salaries account for more than 50 percent of the total wages paid in the industry.

According to Pertamina, there are 22,956 workers in the country's oil and gas industry, 943 of whom are foreigners.

A local worker admitted to The Post he was jealous of the higher salary given to his foreign colleagues.

Above all, he disliked the fact that his foreign colleagues were reluctant to share their knowledge with locals.

Life is relatively peaceful offshore. Anyone involved in a physical fight is immediately dismissed.

But, to some people, life offshore can also be stressful. A worker recalled that he once witnessed a fellow worker yelling and crying like a crazy man because of a family problem.

"Some have even tried to commit suicide," he said, but he had never heard about sexual abuse at his working place.

Herry said he often missed his family when working.

"It is quite hard for me and everybody else here. But we also know that we'll meet them during our week off," he said.