Ruslan Zakirov: Add as a Colleague
07/28/2010 4:47:50 AM EDT

I do not think that such thing as International Compliance & Ethics in our industry exist. Nearly 100% of all E & P companies are saying that they are equal opportunity companies. Then, you go to their web-site or professional sites and realize that they need only Americans, Europeans or Australians. All of a sudden whatever is loudly pronounced is absolutely different. Deepwater Horizon is just exactly the example of such attitude: instead of hiring professional people, some of the critical positions were filled in with passport holders. In our company, there is a Discrimination Policy but it ends up that the management brings a statement as "retention bonus is for everybody but Russians", Vietnamese employees do not have medical insurance unlike anybody else, etc. Plus, senior management fully supports and promotes the culture of reporting who-said-what and not interested in the rig performance. But the best thing is the ultimate culture of "cover-your-ass" & share-responsibility. I was shocked when my boss instructed a new employee as follows: Always share the responsibilities with other people, don't take any initiatives, etc.