Developing Middle East Upstream Talent: BP's Story

"You do see that there is a strong government emphasis on nationalization [of the workforce] in all the countries. Even in the UAE [United Arab Emirates], 2013 was declared as the year of 'Emiratization'. Oman has very strong 'Omanization' program. And so, similarly, all the countries in this region have very strong government support in building the national workforce," he said.

"But I think the other factor is that there is a big youth bulge. There are a lot of young people coming into the workforce. So, it becomes automatically easy to tap into that workforce and try and develop it. Of course, it takes longer – you need to train and develop the workers – but at the end of the day to have a large, locally-available population that is coming through into the workforce encourages you to develop them."

BP's upstream operation in the Middle East is focused on the UAE, Oman and Jordan, where it is working with these countries' governments and populations to help develop local talent.

"The primary location where we are building our own business (in the Middle East) is in Oman," RV Said.

"In the UAE, it's a non-operated business relationship where we have a stake in the national oil companies in Abu Dhabi. It's a longstanding relationship from the original days when we discovered oil and gas here. So BP's effort is in developing the Emirati talent through the national oil companies and we do that through the deployment of secondees: BP experts who go and work in the National Oil Companies. A big part of their role is coaching and developing local nationals but also transferring technology and bringing BP expertise to the national oil companies."

BP also operates a youth program in the region that is aimed at 14 to 18 year olds.

"For many years, we've been running the BP Young Adventurers Program. It takes young Emiratis and Omanis and puts them through a leadership development program. So this is about developing leadership skills in high school and college students to build them up for the future," RV said.