Panel Sessions

Industry
Breakfast Session		 Panel Sessions Posters Monday
Technical Programme		 Tuesday
Technical Programme		 Wednesday
Technical Programme

 

Monday, 26 september

1030-1230 hours

Shape of the Future Relation Between the Industry Players - IOCS, NOCS and the Service Industry?

The alliance vision for new oil and gas projects has changed significantly over the past several years because of the need to bring massive production projects on line in shorter times. No company can do it on its own. The involvement and cooperation of international oil companies (IOCs), national oil companies (NOCs), and service companies has become essential. The motive for this new alliance vision is the scale of challenges facing new projects, including new innovative technology applications and the ability to secure and manage production. In today’s hard-to-access oil, technology plays an increasingly critical role in the success of projects. NOCs, IOCs and service companies relations and partnerships presents a set of opportunities as well as challenges for technological development.

To understand the various skills required, it is worth examining more closely the respective roles of IOCs, NOCs, and service companies in the current innovation environmental science.

IOCs have been the leaders in the “ability to produce oil.” The knowledge and expertise cultivated from more than 100 years in managing resources around the world resides within these companies, and they have created many of the game-changing technological breakthroughs that facilitate today’s oil and gas production. IOCs also have a very strong global intellectual-property (IP) portfolio that covers the entire value chain from exploration to distribution. Their manufacturing ability is a unique strength for future innovations.

NOCs own huge amounts of reserves and most of the future supply of oil and gas will come from NOCs. They are dedicated to developing their staff with the technological capability and skills to work side by side with service companies and IOCs. Many NOCs have begun in-house technology-development programs tailored to their own needs.

Because each oilfield is different, there are demands for different technological necessities. NOCs are best suited to provide such knowledge back to service companies and IOCs to facilitate the next wave of technological innovation.

Service companies: in today’s world, it is impossible to produce without the involvement of service companies. Service companies started off in operations but now successfully manage technologies and have been responsible for numerous technological innovations. In the process, they have managed to develop a strong IP portfolio with respect to their core competencies. Recently, service companies have begun to partner with NOCs directly without the involvement of IOCs.

Session Moderators: Khaled Nouh, President Middle East, Baker Hughes; Robert H. (Bob) Gales, Vice President – Geoscience, Weatherford

Panelists: 

  • Gerald Schotman, Executive VP - Innovation, R&D, Shell Chief Technology Officer, Royal Dutch Shell
  • Hosnia Hashim, Deputy Managing Director North, Kuwait Oil Company
  • Nicholas Gee, Group Vice President Completion and Production, Weatherford International

 

1030-1230 hours 

Avoiding Past Mistakes

One of the most important ways to improve results is to learn from our past mistakes. Often in geoscience and engineering, we find ourselves presenting successes and down playing failures. That is a natural human tendency. Yet experience has shown that it is our mistakes that often teach us the most. Benefitting from the past means embracing our mistakes, understanding them, learning new behaviours/attitudes and setting forth strategies to avoid them in the future. The final step is to communicate these learnings clearly and broadly throughout our organisations.

Albert Einstein has said, "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

What is more important is to learn from the mistakes and how to overcome them by mastering the art and science of 'I know what I don’t know.' The larger the ambitions, the more dependent one will be on the ability to overcome and learn from mistakes.

How to review complex mistakes? The more complex the mistake, the further back you will need to go and the more careful and open-minded you need to be in your own investigation. If multiple people were involved (e.g. your superiors, co-workers and contractors), you want to hear each persons’ account of what happened. Each person will emphasise different aspects of the situation based on their skills and circumstances, getting you closer to a complete view of what took place.

Lesson learnt: Until you work backward, hours or days before the actual mistake or event, you probably won’t see all of the contributing factors and can’t learn all of the possible lessons. You may even need to bring in an objective outsider to help sort things out. Progress won’t be a straight line but if you keep learning you will have more successes than failures, and the mistakes you make along the way will help you get to where you want to go.

Some good practices while investigating mistakes are:

  • What was the probable sequence of events?
  • What information could have avoided the mistake?
  • What would we do differently if in this exact situation again?
  • What small mistakes, in sequence, contributed to the bigger mistake?

Session Moderators: Mohammad A. Husain, Deputy Chairman & Deputy Managing Director Planning and Gas, Kuwait Oil Company; Robert Bunch, Technical Manager, Exxon Al Khalij

Panelists:

  • Adnan Ghabris, CEO and Managing Director, NPS Energy
  • Balgacem Chariag, President EH Operations, Baker Hughes
  • Khalid A. Al-Sumaiti, Deputy Managing Director, E&PD Directorate, Kuwait Oil Company
  • Saif Al Hinai, Oil and Gas Assets Director, Petroleum Development Oman

 

Tuesday, 27 september

1030-1230 hours

Value Chain Integration in Mega Projects: Who and What Drives the Project to Success

The Value Chain concept, first published by Michael Porter in 1985, defines the activities of designing, developing, manufacturing, distributing and servicing a product as a Value Chain, where each step in the process adds value to the product. This concept is easy to understand and apply, even from a timeline point of view, when only considering a single company or business unit, but it becomes significantly more complex as we look at MegaProjects, such as the field development projects currently being implemented or reviewed particularly in the Middle East.

The “end product” of these MegaProjects is long-term, high level sustained production capacity and high recovery factor at the lowest possible cost. In order to achieve this goal, the value chains of the various disciplines involved have to be interwoven in terms of process and timeline to reduce commercial and technical risk, creating a "Value Mesh." As an example, the optimum time to design the handling capacity of surface production facilities is in the very early stages of field development – later adjustments in terms of capacity are disproportionately CAPEX intensive. Unfortunately, at this early stage, the oil or gas field will only have been characterized based on a very limited amount of subsurface data and the risk of future “surprises” will invariably be very high. Such “surprises” may include a structurally more complex, barriers to flow, lateral variations in oil quality or reservoir permeability, insufficient pressure support calling for artificial lift, etc.

This panel will highlight these and other challenges and discuss how a thorough understanding of the various value chains involved in a MegaProject and the way they interact can lead to the creation of a Value Mesh, driven by knowledge, integration and communication, such that accurate real-time information drives better technical and financial decision.

Session Moderators: Abdulaziz A. AbdulKarim, General Manager, EXPEC Computer Center, Saudi Aramco and Khaled Nouh, President Middle East, Baker Hughes

Panelists:

  • Alberto Matucci, General Manager Operations, Turbomachinery, GE Oil & Gas
  • Jamal Ibrahim, Senior Vice President Middle East – India, Worley Parsons
  • Khaled Abu-Nasrah, President – Middle East Region, KBR
  • Nasser Wohaibi, Facility Planning Manager , Saudi Aramco
  • Rob Brouwer, Vice President Project Engineering, Chief Engineer, Shell

 

1030-1230 hours

Capacity and Skills Development Within Development Within Industry: Innovation VS. Implementation

Our industry is facing exciting changes that present both opportunities and challenges for the industry’s most important asset – its people. With new innovations enabling us to do more with less, these changes present great opportunities for new ways of thinking and new ways of working. This creates exciting possibilities for people eager to push the limits and who are seeking an industry with long term growth potential.  However with this come challenges – 'the big crew change,' attracting new blood into the industry, development of new skill sets, and the like.  This session is focused on how we give and get the most to and from our most precious resource – our people.

Session Moderators: Aaron Gatt Floridia, President Middle East, Schlumberger; Zara Z. Khatib, Chief Technologist, Gas Research Centre, Petroleum Institute/Shell

Panelists:

  • Bernie Vining, Chief Geoscientist, Baker Hughes
  • Clement Edwards, Petroleum Engineering Coordinator, Shell
  • Fareed Abdullah, Senior Vice President BAB and Gas, Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations
  • Hashim S. Hashim, Deputy Managing Director (South & East Kuwait) , Kuwait Oil Company
  • Huda Al-Ghoson, General Manager, Training & Development, Saudi Aramco

 

Wednesday, 28 september

0800-1000 hours

Technology Development: How Fast?

It is deemed that the demand for oil and gas will continue to rise due to the increase in world population and the spread of economic and technological prosperity in regions considered less developed. The biggest challenge facing the oil and gas industry is to meet the future world demand for energy at an affordable price.

  • What are the pathways and potential business models to continue the role of R&D as a driving force for future E&P?
  • Should we or should we not invest in blue sky technologies? Are we spending enough? Who should lead? Responding to a powerful combination of the changing business climate and major scientific and technological advances, new models and trends for industrial R&D have emerged.
  • What are the consequences of these trends in view of future business and technological challenges facing the oil and gas industry?
  • How will trends in these key technologies impact applications for E&P? Future E&P performance may be even more dependent on continued technological advances than the R&D system or model.
  • What are the most influential technologies of the future for E&P? The research environment in universities and government research organisations are also facing major changes and challenges.
  • Will new expectations from industrial organisations significantly change their key contribution to long-term basic research and graduate education?

The session addresses the relevance of having a well established R&D model for oil and gas operators and service companies, universities and research labs, and government in delivering influential technologies fast; Very fast in E&P!   

Session Moderators: Abdulaziz O. Al-Kaabi, Chief Technologist, Saudi Aramco; Sidqi Abu Khamsin, Chairman, Petroleum Engineering Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals

Panelists:

  • Dan Georgi, Vice President Regional Technology Centers, Baker Hughes
  • Jeroen Regtien, Vice President Hydrocarbon Recovery Technologies, Shell
  • Michael Bittar, Vice President Technology, Halliburton
  • Ram Shenoy, Vice President Research, Schlumberger
  • Samer AlAshgar, Manager EXPEC Advanced Research Center, Saudi Aramco
  • Shahab D. Mohaghegh, Professor, Petroleum & Natural Gas Engineering, West Virginia University