Baku Higher Oil School

In recent years, important steps have been taken in our country to regulate the economy on the basis of new principles. The purpose of establishing the Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS) is to meet the needs of SOCAR, which is expanding its activities abroad, as well as other industries in the country for English-speaking specialists trained on the basis of modern curricula and training technologies. To achieve this goal, BHOS has created an educational infrastructure that meets modern requirements, highly qualified teaching staff is involved in the teaching process, a rich library and information fund, multifunctional laboratories have been established to support the education process.

BHOS was established by the Decree issued by the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev on the 29th of November 2011, as a state higher education institution within the structure of SOCAR.

In February 2012, the Charter of BHOS was registered with the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Azerbaijan (AR). On the 10th of April of the same year, by the order of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Elmar Gasimov was appointed rector of BHOS, and in May, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Azerbaijan issued a special permit (license) for staff training at the University.

On the 1st of May 2017, a new BHOS campus was opened with the participation of President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev. At present, this, the largest campus in the Caucasus region, has a rich material and technical base, laboratories donated by companies such as Schneider Electric, IBA, Avandsis Group, Emerson Process Management and Huawei. There is a dining complex, 2 gyms and a swimming pool.

BHOS has a Bachelor’s programme in Oil and Gas Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Process Automation Engineering, Information Security, Computer Engineering and Business Administration, and a Master’s in Oil and Gas Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Process Automation Engineering and Business Administration (MBA).

BHOS is a leader among the universities of Azerbaijan for the number of students awarded Presidential Scholarships. In the 2021/2022 academic year, 33 BHOS students were awarded Presidential Scholarships and the student with the highest score in the entrance exams chose BHOS.

In accordance with the motto issued by the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev “We must transform oil into human capital”, BHOS not only provides a high quality engineering education to its students, it also provides them with jobs. As a result of the purposeful measures taken, since the first graduation of the University in 2017, all graduates have been employed. They are working now at SOCAR and its enterprises like Azneft, Azerikimya, Heydar Aliyev Oil Refinery, Umid-Babek Operating Company (UBOC) and SOCAR Polymer, as well as SOCAR Turkey’s Petkim Petrokimya Holding and STAR Oil Refinery.

BHOS graduates work not only at SOCAR, they have also been employed by large transnational companies such as BP, Schlumberger, Halliburton, Maire Tecnimont and others. Currently, the graduates who are not starting their careers continue their education at the Master’s and PhD levels in the leading universities of Azerbaijan and the world.

BHOS also cooperates with many prestigious universities around the world, implementing student and teacher exchange programmes with these universities. In recent years, the University has sent students to study in countries such as Greece, Bulgaria and Spain, as well as received students from Romania and Kazakhstan under the Erasmus + programme. In the 2021/2022 academic year, 41 students from different countries studied at BHOS and 12 of them have chosen BHOS within the student exchange programme.

BHOS operates the School of Project Management, within an 8-module training programme on Project Management provided by Duke University, USA. This programme is implemented with the technical support of the Twenty-Eighty Strategy Execution (STRATEX), the leading international training programme on project management. The school has already held its 11th graduation ceremony.

On the 26th to 29th of May 2022, the teams of BHOS won different competitions at the largest Aerospace and Technology Festival of Türkiye TEKNOFEST, held for the first time in Baku. 16 teams and 2 startup projects successfully represented BHOS at the festival’s final stage. 6 of the school’s teams were awarded 8 prizes in 6 competitions in category B. The teams Istiglal and Ateshgah won 1st place, Murov - 2nd place, Gulustan - 3rd place and Oguz - 2nd and 3rd places in various competitions, and team Hakari was awarded 3rd place in two competitions.

BHOS was leading the Azerbaijani universities attended the TEKNOFEST Green Technologies competition. 15 of the school’s 33 teams that applied to Teknofest submitted their projects to this competition. 8 of the 10 finalists in this nomination were BHOS teams.

For the first time in the history of an independent Azerbaijan, BHOS students represented our country in NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge. A BHOS team was awarded a certificate by NASA Marshall Space Flight Centre that it completed the competition by fulfilling the requirements of various reports, presentations and tasks, along with the successful design of the NASA HERC rover within 9 months. The BHOS NASA HERC 2022 team qualified for the finals after 9 months of activity and competed with 90 teams from 8 countries, including teams representing prestigious universities in the USA.

BHOS is the only higher education institution in Azerbaijan that has ISO 9001 (Quality Management System), ISO 14001 (Environmental Management Systems), OHSAS 18001 (Occupational Safety and Health Management Systems) and ISO 10002 (Customer Satisfaction - Complaints Management Guidelines) certificates.

Promotional video about BHOS: