Shell Global Solutions, a unit of oil giant Royal Dutch Shell Group, plans to boost its headcount in Malaysia in line with its efforts to nurture local and regional talents, local press reported Wednesday.

The company's regional operations manager for Asia Pacific ( projects) Winfried Arens said the company aims to raise its staff in Malaysia to 500 persons by the year 2008 from the current 370.

The company hopes to enable local and regional staff to take the lead in business projects, Arens told the New Straits Times ( NST) in an interview.

Arens admitted it is not easy to find suitable people to do the job "because building a competence of an expert is something which requires quite a number of years and being an expert such as in process design can take some time."

To develop more local talents, the company has put in a lot of efforts in organizing a number of courses for local staff, and even sent some of them to the Hague or other places in Europe to undergo various training, said Arens.

Shell Global Solutions set up an office in Kuala Lumpur in 2003 as one of its three global centers of excellence. The other two centers are located in Houston of the United States and the Hague of the Netherlands.