How important is technology to Saudi Aramco’s strategy?
The development and implementation of a globally competitive technology is very important to Saudi Aramco. We believe technology leadership drives continued and future success in the energy sector and is essential to achieving our aspirations to help solve global energy challenges and to stimulate the local knowledge economy.
We have laid the groundwork to create a sustainable competitive advantage through the introduction of a balanced portfolio of technically feasible and commercially viable technology options.
In upstream, the key research domains are reservoir engineering, computational modeling, drilling, production, geophysics, and geology. Research and development activities seek to increase incremental oil recovery from major reservoirs and increase the company’s resource base. Specific technology projects are directed toward increasing exploration probability, reducing finding costs, increasing production reliability, and enhancing cost efficiency.
In downstream, by which we mean everything that takes place above the ground, the key research domains are oil and gas treatment, oil upgrading, chemicals, and network integrity. The downstream research domains are all about maximizing the value from every barrel of oil we produce, which is achieved though innovation in process improvement and production efficiencies in downstream businesses such as chemicals and refining.
In addition, our strategic research domains of carbon management and fuel/engine technology pursue the long-term sustainability of crude oil as the preferred energy source in the global marketplace.
What are the new technologies being pursued?
Our technology portfolio includes a number of cutting-edge innovations across a range of disciplines, including areas such as advanced materials, robotics, computational modeling, and others.
For example, researchers at our upstream research center are at the forefront of leveraging micro- and nanotechnologies to develop breakthrough technologies to increase oil and gas production.
Specific areas of interest include exploration, drilling, reservoir characterization, mapping and detecting various subsurface fluids, improved/enhanced oil recovery, and production.
Our vision for in-situ reservoir nano-agents includes multiple technologies such as the following:
- Intelligent nano-agents, 1/1,000 the size of a human hair, that are designed to be injected into the reservoir, collect data, and then be retrieved from producing wells
- Magnetic nanomappers that can be used to map the movements of injected fluids inside hydrocarbon reservoirs
- Nano-agents that can act as delivery agents for chemicals targeted for deep release into the reservoir
Other potential applications include microsensors and nanosensors for use in harsh environments during drilling, production, and inside the reservoir.
In our efforts to improve seismic data acquisition, we are developing, along with partners, a fully automated marine seismic acquisition system. This system, based on autonomous underwater vehicles, promises to revolutionize marine data acquisition, making it more cost-effective, faster, and with better data quality than ever before.
Our work also includes industry-leading simulation tools such as our flagship reservoir simulator GigaPOWERS with its super-high resolution capabilities, that allow us to use geoscience and engineering data to develop high-fidelity models that enable better placement of wells, improve sweep efficiency, and optimize field development leading to higher hydrocarbon recovery. New simulation tools are being developed that will be many times more powerful than GigaPOWERS.
In addition, we are working on new approaches to basin simulation, which will support the exploration program by simulating the oil and gas migration over millions of years from source rock to potential traps throughout the Arabian Peninsula. This will help locate new oil and gas accumulations in the peninsula and the Red Sea, leading to a higher hydrocarbon resource base.
In other areas such as artificial lift, we are developing advanced electrical submersible pumps capable of a 1-day “rigless” change-out and with extended service life.
We are also investigating next-generation drilling microchips, which may present a low-cost and low-risk downhole data acquisition system that will help optimize drilling operations.
To enhance well productivity, we are also investigating in-situ exothermic chemical reactions as a means to create fractures around the wellbore.
We are pursuing the development of a number of technologies to maximize the conversion of oil into more valuable products, including special demulsifier chemicals, natural gas upgrading membranes, and novel catalysts and processes for refining and petrochemicals.
In support of our company’s move into the chemicals business, we are developing competitive technologies to directly convert crude oil to chemicals via multiple routes to help provide additional feedstock for petrochemical expansion.
Are the technologies being developed in your research center “open to use” or proprietary technology?
We continuously strive to leverage our intellectual property (IP) portfolio, practices, and processes to position Saudi Aramco as a global technology leader. We pursue patents in areas in which IP protection provides a competitive advantage, global recognition, strategic positioning, and product differentiation.
In 2014, our IP strategy yielded significant results. We were granted 99 patents by the US Patent and Trademark Office, the most awarded in a single year in our history, and 154 new patent applications were filed.
We are open to license certain technologies when it makes business and commercial sense. But we are very selective about which technologies are included in our licensing portfolio, as some we see as offering distinct competitive advantages and, so, we choose to keep them in-house.
Recently, your company inaugurated several R&D centers in the US and around the world. Will the research conducted in these centers focus on problems specific to reservoirs in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), or will it focus on general industry problems?
Establishing and sustaining a global research and technology presence is a key enabler of our drive to achieve leadership across our technology portfolio. Collaborating on a global scale with world-class partners in research domains of strategic importance to us significantly enhances the quality and scope of our research and validates our research directions. This approach provides access to the diverse pools of research talent around the world and allows us to build upon the experience and knowledge of others. Harnessing such intellectual and professional diversity is one of the key sources of innovation and competitiveness.
Our global research centers and technology offices represent strategic hubs of innovation and research talent in targeted locations worldwide. In addition to our in-kingdom research center at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), five international research centers and three technology offices continued to grow in scale and scope, providing support and services to research and technology projects, and enabling innovative research in high-impact, long-term, value-creating domains—all designed to provide us with a substantial competitive advantage.
These centers will cover a wide variety of challenges that we face in different domains from exploration to drilling to completion, and will include not only the challenges we face in KSA, but also challenges that the industry faces as a whole.
Ahmad Al-Khowaiter is the chief technology officer of Saudi Aramco. He was the chief engineer from 2011 to 2014 and executive director of power systems in 2014 before assuming his present role. Al-Khowaiter joined Saudi Aramco in 1983 and has held technical roles in oil and gas production organizations, including design, project management, commissioning, and operations, and supervisory, managerial, and general management positions.
He led the commissioning and startup of the Hawiyah and Haradh gas plants, two of the largest natural gas processing plants in the world, and the planning and development of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).
Al-Khowaiter holds a BS degree in chemical engineering from the King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, an MS degree in chemical engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and an MBA degree as a Sloan Fellow from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.