ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 28, 1991                   TAG: 9102280470
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-9   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

JOBS SOUGHT IN GULF

Torn apart by the Gulf War and divided by deep political and religious rivalries, the Middle East may not appear to be the ideal place to go job hunting.

But American job seekers have swamped the switchboards at the Houston offices of the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. after the oil giant placed want ads in U.S. newspapers Sunday announcing 1,000 engineering and other positions in the Saudi Kingdom. The hiring is part of a long-term, multibillion-dollar project to expand the capacity of Saudi oil production facilities.

"Our experience has surprised everyone," said Saudi Aramco spokesman Bill Tracy. "Our switchboard was so flooded that AT&T called and asked to see if our phones were broken." To better handle the volume, Aramco's next series of classified ads will refer job seekers to employment agencies, Tracy said.

The Saudi expansion program, coupled with the massive effort to rebuild war-shattered Kuwait - a project one Kuwaiti official estimated this week would cost $500 billion - will create thousands of jobs for American engineers in the Mideast and the United States.

The boom comes none too soon. The 1980s saw thousands of engineers lose their jobs as major Mideast construction projects dried up. More recently, the U.S. construction industry has fallen into a slump. And the new jobs also may appeal to some of the thousands of aerospace engineers and managers who have been laid off in recent years.

"They naturally want to look at allied markets to turn their talents to," said Ralph Cooper, associate dean for research and development at the Cal State Long Beach School of Engineering.

Such U.S. engineering firms as Bechtel in San Francisco, Parsons in Pasadena, Calif., and Fluor in Irvine, Calif., are expected to win major contracts in Kuwait. Already, Parsons is hiring about 1,000 engineers for oil facility projects on the Alaskan North Slope and in Saudi Arabia for Saudi Aramco.

Despite the dangers, engineering and petroleum industry officials expect no major problems attracting U.S. workers to the Mideast. 


 by CNB