Obviously, employing more Aboriginal workers would be a win for an industry desperately short of people. But it would also help indigenous communities, which have high levels of unemployment and are largely poverty-stricken despite being near major existing and proposed oil and gas projects.

Individuals close to both parties believe there is light at the end of the tunnel, but getting there will require patience, teamwork and a holistic approach.

“The fly-in, fly-out workforce comes at a cost, both financially and socially,” APPEA’s WA and NT director Don Sanders said.

“It’s not good for the local [indigenous] communities to see the wealth quite literally flying over their heads. We’d much prefer to have the workforce living in those areas.”

According to new research, indigenous Australians accounted for 8% of the mining workforce last year. This compares to 1.9% in 2001 and 4.6% in 2002.

While the petroleum sector is a long way from achieving figures such as these, several companies appear to be heading in the right direction.

A year ago, Woodside had just two indigenous people on its payroll. Now it has 88, more than a quarter of whom work on location at the giant North West Shelf project.

Likewise, Chevron recruited two trainees last year and has a further two about to join its ranks. The oil giant hopes to further boost these numbers next year with the introduction of an internal indigenous cadetship program.

Nobody is kidding themselves that finding, training, employing and retaining indigenous workers will be easy.

“The setbacks and challenges are tremendous,” said Woodside indigenous affairs advisor Meath Hammond.

“You’re looking at trying to turn around a situation where there are often 20 people living together in the same house and a 15-year-old kid has just a 50% chance of making it to retirement alive.”

There is also a distrust of the resources industry to contend with.

“There’s a great deal of cynicism because they’ve heard this all before,” Hammond said.

“They’ve been told things will change but they haven’t. These communities want action, not words.”

Hammond suggested the petroleum sector should look to the miners for direction.

“Over the last decade, the minerals sector has been showing us how to engage these people in their workforce,” he said.

“It’s time for oil and gas players to say, ‘Let’s work together on this’. We need to see more collaboration between what are essentially competing entities.”

Arc Energy chief operating officer Marie Malaxos agreed.

“The skills shortage is an industry-wide problem, so there’s no point stealing and poaching staff from one another,” she said.

This call for collaboration has already been put in action with the imminent opening of the Australian Technical College in the Pilbara.

Led by Western Australia’s Chamber of Minerals and Energy, the initiative involves industry partners Woodside, APPEA, Chevron, BHP Billiton Iron Ore, Rio Tinto and the WA Department of Education and Training.

The college aims to groom teenagers, especially indigenous youth, for resources sector careers. It will offer Year 11 and 12 students in the isolated region the opportunity to complete academic studies while training in a traditional trade.

“It’s a no-brainer that a technical college in the Pilbara needed a strong indigenous focus,” Sanders said.

“Given the right training and support, they make fantastic tradespeople. In time, we’re going to see more and more Aboriginal faces in the process plant operations and other hands-on roles.”

For the past two years, Sanders has chaired the Indigenous Engagement Forum, which brings together representatives from member companies – Arc, Apache Energy, BHP, Chevron and Woodside – to share ideas on this subject.

One such program to emerge from the forum involved training eight metro-based individuals for careers in business administration.

And one year later, those eight are either still working in the industry or have gone on to further business-related study, according to Sanders.

“It was very successful,” he said. “All of the companies involved have put their hands up and said ‘We’ll take more’.”

From her observations, Malaxos said the appointment of one of these trainees had benefits right across Arc’s workplace at its Perth-based headquarters.

“It creates an understanding and tolerance of people’s different cultures,” she said.

As the smallest company in this endeavour, Arc hopes to employ more indigenous workers as it extends its operational reach into northwest Australia.

But providing jobs and training is only half the equation.

Woodside’s Hammond warns that even despite the best intentions, companies could end up leaving the communities in a worse predicament than before they intervened.

“You can’t go in there and cherry-pick the best people without thinking about the consequences this brain drain is going to have on the communities,” he said.

“We’ve got to build these communities and keep them vibrant.”

As history shows, this will not happen overnight. Instead it is likely to take years, probably generations, to turn the corner.

Recognising this, Chevron has extended its support and funding to the community as a whole.

For instance, the closest town to Chevron’s Thevenard and Barrow Island oil projects is Onslow, where more than half the town’s population is indigenous.

Chevron has committed $90,000 over the next three years to supporting a Youth Outreach Program, aimed at providing young people with activities in a bid to curb boredom that could otherwise manifest itself as anti-social behaviour.

The oil giant also contributes $50,000 each year to the Pilbara Industry and Community Council, whose focus on employment and training has recently been expanded to include education, health care, housing and long-term sustainability issues to 2050.

Woodside’s Hammond said holistic approaches such as these were vital if the sector was serious about involving indigenous people in the longer term.

“You need to look at the journey from pre-school to uni as a whole,” he said. “You need to put an entire suite of programs in place, such as improving parent-child literacy, breakfast programs, putting computers in high schools, et cetera.”

While the mining sector has been painstakingly plugging away at this for the past 10 to 15 years, it is all a relatively new concept to the petroleum industry.

But it’s one that could just work.

The way Sanders sees it is that the northwest resources boom is likely to continue for the next couple of decades, so it makes economic sense to invest in forward-thinking strategies such as this.

“This is the first time we’ve seen a joint and concerted effort like this. As an industry, particularly in an area like the Pilbara, we haven’t really got involved like we are now,” he said.

“I believe in 12 months to two years time, it’s going to be a very different picture from today.”

First published in the July issue of Petroleum magazine