Brae to get another oil company hotel
OIL GIANT BP has confirmed that the company is to build a 120-bed hotel in the Brae area to accommodate new staff working at the Sullom Voe Terminal.
The company is changing its shift pattern at the terminal to an offshore style ‘two weeks on/three weeks off’, and is looking to recruit an additional 100 staff.
It says the change comes in response to difficulties in attracting a sufficient number of local people with the right skills to run the terminal.
Sullom Voe Terminal currently employs around 200 core staff – not including several hundred contractors – on site. That number will go up to 300 over the next two years.
On Tuesday a company spokeswoman said the plan was to open the new hotel early in 2016.
“We are currently in the middle of a procurement exercise to identify the company that is going to design it, build it and then operate it for us,” she said.
The spokeswoman also said the company was trying to recruit as many as possible of its workforce locally but added that “ultimately we have to try and attract people from outside the islands and that is where the ‘two and three rotational pattern’ comes in”.
Last August, BP’s competitor Total opened its own hotel just outside Brae to accommodate managerial staff for the £800 million Shetland Gas Plant, which is still under construction.
The £6.5 million Moorfield Hotel employs more than 40 local staff.
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