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Three times in the last three years, employees of BP have packed their bags for emergency evacuations: Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, the unrest in Egypt earlier this year and the onset of Libya’s civil war in February. Each forced a hasty exit for expatriate staff of the British oil giant.

In Libya, every international energy company froze operations and withdrew employees, some from remote camps deep in the Sahara.

But these incidents have done nothing to diminish the necessity for staff to work outside their home countries, nor – in general – their willingness to do so. International mobility remains a key requirement for any career with a big energy company.

BP’s human resources department believes that, if anything, the speed and efficiency of the recent evacuations served as an important reassurance for the company’s expatriates.

“BP was able to take very swift and immediate action to look after our employees,” says Amanda Chilcott, vice-president of human resources for BP’s North Sea operations. “People thought ‘it’s OK to go to these locations because I see how quickly and effectively BP can respond if necessary’.”

This reassurance will have been all the more welcome because anyone working for an energy company has probably become more mobile over the last 20 years. During the cold war, large areas of the world were, in effect, off-limits for western oil majors. Until the early 1990s, even the biggest energy companies tended to have a relatively concentrated array of production assets, found generally in the North Sea, Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.

Today, new terrain has opened up, leading the oil giants to deploy their staff much farther afield. A couple of decades ago, few would have imagined that western energy giants would be able to operate big oilfields in Angola and Azerbaijan. When the senior employees of these companies began their careers during the cold war, Angola was torn by conflict and Azerbaijan was a Soviet republic, locked firmly behind the Iron Curtain.

While the scope for international travel has widened, however, some general rules remain.

First, the biggest companies still have established hubs which serve as acknowledged training grounds for essential expertise. In the case of BP, the North Sea plays this role. Of the 20,000 people employed in BP’s upstream functions worldwide, 3,500 work in the North Sea operation, which spans the maritime boundary between the UK and Norway.

This is where upstream staff cut their teeth and gain valuable experience, before being deployed elsewhere. The North Sea operation is a “fertile recruiting source for high calibre staff for other parts of the organisation”, says Ms Chilcott. “We are definitely a net exporter of talent. We recruit a lot of people, not because people leave us for other companies or through natural attrition, but because they get re-deployed around the world.”

Visit a BP-operated platform in the Caspian Sea or the Atlantic waters of Angola, and the engineers and technicians are likely to have begun their careers in the North Sea. Many will probably have lived in Aberdeen. “I don’t think there’s a single region of BP you can go to and not find someone with North Sea experience,” adds Ms Chilcott.

The US – particularly Houston, Texas – serves as the other great centre of upstream expertise for BP and the other oil giants. This reflects the historical and current importance of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico as production hubs.

The oilfields found in the North Sea and the US have key features in common. Both include a diverse range of geological features and technical challenges. Both also have production assets at every stage of their operational lives, from new discoveries to mature fields. The skills learned in these regions can be applied to almost any other operation elsewhere.

The second general rule is that no long-term career with a big energy company is possible without international travel. Upstream engineers may, in general, be more mobile than staff who perform other functions. But the impression that executives lead relatively predictable lives while technical experts are constantly on the move is mistaken.

All companies place great emphasis on understanding the political, legal, regulatory and environmental differences across national frontiers. Executives will have spent much of their careers as engineers or seismologists, during which they will have travelled widely.

To climb the ladder requires knowledge and experience of a wide array of countries. As the barriers to investment across borders have come down, so the premium placed on this kind of international expertise has become greater. Executives “will struggle to be successful if they haven’t had some kind of international exposure”, says Ms Chilcott.

Will this year’s unrest in the Middle East deter people from a career that might involve living in a volatile country? Privately, insiders say that anyone tempted by a career of this kind is unlikely to be put off. They will understand the risks – as well as the benefits – of taking a job in this field.

And hasty evacuations from the Middle East are nothing new. BP started life as the Anglo-Persian oil company, based in Iran. As long ago as 1951, it was forced to evacuate all staff when the Iranian government seized its assets.

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