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The Bahraini press also launched a campaign around the simple matter of

shortening working hours during the month of Ramadan, turning it into a religious

affair and describing BAPCO as a company that ‘mocks everything in relation to

their beliefs’. 166 Al-Bakir went on to claim that Bahrain was losing some of the

benefit due from oil production mainly ‘due to the conspiracies, its strings were

weaved by the British Government’s men in Bahrain and their associates from the

Bahrain Petroleum Company’. He then blamed BAPCO when Bahrainis opted to

leave their jobs at BAPCO for other regional jobs in the petroleum industry citing the

company’s tight budget and without elaborating on the issue. Al-Bakir claimed that

of a total of 12,700 employees at the company only 2,700 were locals and the rest

were foreigners. Al-Bakir produced these figures in an address to the Kuwaiti

Studentship Union in Cairo in 1956. 167

However the data presented by Al-Bakir was misleading. According to the

former Resident Hay in a journal article published in 1955, the approximate number

of local employees at BAPCO was 5,000. 168 Other sources, -- the Political Agency’s

annual report of 1954 and the New York Times in 1955 -- published more detailed

figures of the oil company’s employees in Bahrain, saying that the number of

employees totalled 8,532, of which 5,829 were Bahrainis. 169 In addition, a report

from BAPCO found at the company’s library and close to this time period dated 31

December 1950 detailing the nationalities of the employees of the company, with

166 Aqil, ‘BAPCO Sharikat Nift Al-Bahrain tatihu taghnujan wa dallalan’ [BAPCO, the Bahrain
Petroleum Company Sways Coquettishly and flirtatiously], Sawut Al-Bahrain, May 1954, 26.
167 Al-Bakir, The Political Situation in Bahrain, 20-21.
168 Hay, ‘The Impact of the Oil Industry on the Persian Gulf Shaykhdoms’, 361-72 (362).
169 TNA, FO 371/114576, Wall, the Annual Administration Report for Her Majesty’s Political Agency
at Bahrain for the Year 1954; and ‘Bahrein Oil Output Up Slightly in 1954’, New York Times, 4 May
1955, 46.

© Hamad E. Abdulla 54