From Baku to Houston: A journey of transformation

Growing up, I always knew I wanted to be a petroleum engineer. It sounds very specific but living in Azerbaijan, the influence of the country’s historic oil and gas industry was everywhere and I spent my childhood playing chess and solving math problems with my father, who is also an engineer.

Combining the two into petroleum engineering was a natural choice, but I could have never predicted all the growth that has come in my career at bp so far. From a summer internship, to joining full-time as a Challenger Wells Engineer, to my current role as a Well Superintendent responsible for delivering safe and reliable wells for bp , my career has developed in ways I would never have expected.?

Early support

I went to a Turkish high school in Baku and had always dreamt of opportunities abroad. Studying internationally was not as accessible at the time due to financial constraints, but after winning the only Turkish Government scholarship available in Azerbaijan to study Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering, I left Azerbaijan for my first choice university, Istanbul Technical University.?

At the time, bp had its own scholarship programme for students, I was offered a scholarship, but as Istanbul Technical University wasn’t on their list, I turned it down. At the end of my first year, I had the top score in my faculty and applied for bp’s scholarship again. bp decided to come to my university and talk to the faculty about my performance and the curriculum. Ultimately, they added my university to their scholarship programme, and I became one of the first students in my faculty to receive the bp scholarship.

After graduating, I decided to return home, where I joined bp’s graduate ‘Challenger’ programme. The country’s future rests on the energy industry, and I was excited to add real value by contributing my skills to the economy.?

Times of change

Both bp and I have changed and grown a lot since I started my journey with bp almost ten years ago. My previous role was created as a result of the ‘reinvent bp’ in late 2020. At bp, we have several regions as well as global oil hubs. My role was to assess and prioritize projects and allocate engineers to them. I was supporting regions like Egypt, Trinidad, Mauritania & Senegal, Angola, Canada, and Brazil. I was also involving in our activities in Azerbaijan, Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea when needed. It was a really varied role that also involved working with senior leaders to manage the global engineering resources for central delivery scopes and allocate them to the right projects to support the agile way of working, as well as managing discipline heath with engineering managers, which includes skill assessments, gap identification for short-team and long-term priorities.

That role has pushed me out of my comfort zone and helped me learn more ‘soft’ skills alongside the technical skills from my past engineering roles. As I often tell the young engineers and graduates, skills like how to negotiate effectively with leaders and partners, collaborate with engineers to understand their aspirations, and look at the big picture to prioritize what’s best for the business will be important not only for our future careers, but for driving forward the energy transition.?

After spending three and a half years in the UK, I was ready for a new challenge. I knew it would not be easy to leave such a diverse and inclusive environment in the UK which was a new home for my family.

However, I was super excited when my line manager told me about the Wells Superintendent role in the Gulf of Mexico. I was offered to lead well operations on one of the biggest offshore drilling facilities that bp owns globally (the one in the background in the following picture??). I would be naive to say this is something I was dreaming in 2013, when I started as a graduate in Baku. However, bp has provided all the building blocks to successfully shape my career, including career development programs, servant leaders, equity & diversity, on the job trainings and treating people as the most valuable asset at the company.

Broad horizons

As somebody born in Baku who does not speak English as a first language, I could have never imagined that I would have the opportunity to work abroad in the UK and the US. I’ve always had great team leaders and mentors who helped me immensely in charting my career path and identifying areas of me to develop. The list is long, but I would like to mention couple of names here. Brandon McNerlin who was a great listener and inspiring leader, Ann Davies who was a role model for most of the engineers at the company and a leader continuously advocating for company values and running her organization with 'Equity' by giving equal opportunities to everyone, and Russell Morrice who was my previous line manager. His people-oriented management style was really empowering for each individual in his team, and he gave a massive space to me to work, to learn, to make mistakes and to deliver. Finally, I would like to mention Emil Ismayilov , who shared his experience a lot to improve my ultimate success along the path in developing my career and helped me to learn about myself.

Since joining bp, I have lived in Aberdeen, London, and now Houston, and I’ve worked with people all over the world from all different backgrounds and cultures. From Baku to Houston, bp has been with me every step of the way while I’ve learnt and grown in ways I would never have imagined. Looking ahead, I am excited to see what the future holds in this new role and beyond!

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