“There’s a shortage of good talent,” McSpirit said.

San Ramon, California-based Chevron, one of 13 companies exploring the Atlantic seabed off Brazil’s coast, employed 65,000 people at the end of 2007. Exxon Mobil had 80,800.

Petrobras intends to recruit all of its new employees from Brazilian universities and technical schools, said Gabrielli, a 59-year-old, Boston University-trained economist.

“They probably can,” said Christopher Ross, a vice president at CRA International Inc. who advised Venezuela in the 1990s on opening that country’s oil sector to foreign companies. “Brazil’s a large country with a very good educational system, and Petrobras has a very positive image at home which allows them to attract the best and the brightest.”

Petrobras is the company of choice for Brazilian university graduates because it offers training and “lifetime careers,” said Guilherme Estrella, who heads the company’s exploration and production business. “That’s our tradition at Petrobras, so we have a very good image,” he told reporters Tueday at an industry conference in Houston.

U.S. and European oil companies are having a tougher time recruiting graduates because the industry’s image has been tarnished in the past 20 years, said Ross, co-author of Terra Incognita: A Navigation Aid for Energy Leaders (PennWell Books, 2007).

“There’s more work to do than people to do it right now,” Ross said. “All of the scientific disciplines are coveted and the companies are competing aggressively with each other to fill positions.”

Petrobras isn’t recruiting any of the 18,000 employees fired by Venezuela’s state oil company during a 2002 2003 strike against the government, Estrella said. Petroleos de Venezuela SA, the biggest oil exporter in the Americas, dismissed more than half of its scientists, managers and laborers after a failed strike aimed at toppling President Hugo Chavez crippled output.

“It’s not because we don’t want the foreigners,” CEO Gabrielli said Tuesday at the conference. “It’s just that we have Brazilians ready and capable to do the work.”

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