Petroleum Engineer Yakap gets confidence in PNG's Kumul Petroleum Academy

THE Kumul Petroleum Academy has given new confidence and personal growth to Zachariah Yakap as a petroleum engineer in the oil and gas industry in the country.
“Coming back to work for Kumul Petroleum after my studies, I realised how much I had learnt. My job is the same but I’m much better at it,” Yakap said after studying in Madrid, Spain, for seven months.

“I have new confidence in my decisions, I ask less questions and less review is required.”
Kumul Petroleum Holdings Ltd (KPHL) managing director Wapu Sonk said: “PNG’s national oil company aims to educate a new generation of Papua New Guineans for technical jobs in the oil and gas industry and the Kumul Petroleum Academy was established for that purpose.
“Our graduate development programme aims to educate future leaders in the industry.”
Growing up in Enga, Yakap has been with Kumul Petroleum since graduating from Unitech with a bachelor of mechanical engineering.
He started in 2015 as a facilities engineer but soon moved into petroleum engineering.
“That is basically what happens below the surface, monitoring and optimising the extraction of oil and gas,” he said.
As part of Kumul Petroleum’s graduate development programme, Yakap spent seven months in Madrid at Repsol’s Centro Superior de Formacion.
“The programme is a condensed master of petroleum engineering and we had to learn in seven months what would usually take 11 months to learn,” he explained.
“It was very intense. School hours were Monday to Friday from 8am to 5pm and we had homework on top of that.
“Every Monday, we started a new subject and every Friday, we had our exam in that subject.”
There were 19 students from all over the world – Canada, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Angola, Bolivia, Argentina, Libya, Portugal – and Kumul Petroleum represented the South Pacific with two students.
“We all lived in the same building in the centre of Madrid and had a one-hour train ride to and from university every day,” Yakap said.
“As a Kumul Petroleum employee, I had a bit of an advantage because the lectures were run by experienced engineers and scientists so they were more focused on real life experiences, rather than the theories behind them.” The National/Pacific Mining Watch

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