ABU DHABI // A group of high school students got a first-hand look at how oil is extracted from the ground, but sadly were not showered in a gush of “black gold”.
“That’s a misconception that everyone has,” an official with Schlumberger, the world’s largest oilfield services company, said with a smile, referring to the cinematic scenes of euphoric prospectors striking it rich. “Otherwise, it would be very easy.”
An audience of about 35 youngsters from public and private schools across the emirate were invited to tour the company’s new rock analysis laboratory in Mussafah as part of Young Adipec, an outreach programme offered by the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (Adipec) and Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec) to help cultivate the next generation of oil and gas professionals.
In addition to touring leading energy companies, the students will take part in engineering workshops during the academic year and will participate in the inaugural Young Adipec Youth Forum next month.
“We don’t have enough Emirati or youth talent in the engineering sector,” said Young Adipec programme manager Hanadi Aliwat. “So the aim is to encourage the young generation to enrol in oil and gas studies and introduce them to the career options available.”
More than 700 pupils have graduated through Young Adipec since it launched with six schools in 2013. This year, four private and 14 public schools will take part in the programme, which is open to students between 14 and 17 years old.
Ms Aliwat said Young Adipec had only anecdotal data about how many of its students have gone on to pursue higher studies in science, technology, engineering or maths.
According to the 2013-2014 UAE Higher Education Factbook, 17.4 per cent of Emirati students were enrolled in an engineering programme for that academic year. Engineering was second only to business administration, which attracted 30.5 per cent of the Emirati student population.
Jeff Sykes, vice principal of the Adnoc Abu Dhabi male campus, who accompanied pupils on the tour of the Schlumberger Rock Laboratory Services, said the experience was “unique and valuable”.
“It gives them an opportunity to see how what they’re learning in the classroom is applied in the real world experience,” Mr Sykes said. “Many of them want to be engineers, some of them specifically want to be petroleum engineers, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, so all the different stations that they saw today applied to some of what they’re aspiring to be.”
Wearing hard hats, lab coats and protective eye goggles, the students were led by Schlumberger engineers and geologists through a series of high-tech geomechanics labs featuring multimillion-dollar proprietary and other industry-standard equipment.
They watched demonstrations of rock samples being cleaned, slabbed, cut into cork-size plugs, stress tested, gamma rayed, X rayed, CT scanned, crushed, powdered and mixed with water as the experts analysed the rock samples’ properties. The results would ultimately tell the engineers whether extractable oil exists in the reservoir where the sample was taken and, if so, how to build around the area to keep the well stable.
At the end of the three-hour tour, 15-year-old Mohammed Babhib was convinced of his career calling.
“I hope I will work here,” the aspiring mechanical and petroleum engineer said. “When I was a kid, I was thinking about cars, but now I am thinking about oil. Oil is more important than cars. Cars need oil to run.”
rpennington@thenational.ae