Baku, August 11, AZERTAC

At the end of the second quarter, BP employed directly 2,866 Azerbaijani nationals, the company said. Some 86% of BP's permanent professionals in Azerbaijan are nationals and many of them are in senior leadership positions.

BP said it continues to focus on the training of nationals including technicians who are trained in the Caspian Technicians Training Centre (CTTC). “Over the 10 years of its existence CTTC has successfully trained more than 1,000 national technicians for BP-operated facilities. The role of these highly qualified technicians is critical to running all of BP-operated facilities both onshore and offshore safely and reliably.”

“BP also continues the training of selected national engineers through the world-class training initiative called "Petro-technical Resource Entry Programme" (PREP). This is a multi-million dollar learning programme designed for national petro-technical graduates and is aimed at supporting capability development of young engineers joining BP.”

“In addition, BP remains committed to achieving a target to reach 90% professional staff nationalization rate by the end of 2018. This envisages nationalizing some of the professional roles that are currently occupied by the expatriate staff. Non-professional staff is already 100% nationalized. The nationalization agenda also includes further optimization of BP's learning and development programmes, close participation in the public and private sector initiatives in order to further improve the local talent market and enhancing the rigorous internal performance management process,” the company said.