Center for Reliability and Efficiency part of IKTVA drive
Officials from Saudi Aramco and Schlumberger review a scale model of the Center for Reliability and Efficiency in Dammam.
Saudi Aramco’s In-Kingdom Total Value Add (IKTVA) program received a boost recently as Schlumberger, a leading global supplier of technology and information solutions to international oil industry clients, officially inaugurated its new regional Center for Reliability and Efficiency (CRE) in the Kingdom.
Amin Nasser, Saudi Aramco’s president and CEO, Mohammed Y. Al Qahtani, senior vice president of Upstream, and Sherif Foda, Schlumberger’s president, Production Group, inaugurated the new cutting-edge facility — the largest of its kind in the world. The center will support oil field asset reliability and efficiency and is a landmark development for Saudi Aramco’s and the Kingdom’s push toward boosting local content in the energy industry and related sectors.
Job creation
The IKTVA program, which was launched in December, is designed to increase investment and economic diversification, enabling job creation and workforce development within Saudi Arabia.
Schlumberger’s 178,000 m2 state-of-the-art center is the largest and most modern CRE. It will employ more than 450 specialized and technically qualified Saudi employees when it reaches full capacity. The CRE, based in Dammam Second Industrial City, is dedicated to the advanced maintenance and servicing of oil and gas technologies.
The new facility will undertake the advanced maintenance of oil field technologies and equipment, including drilling apparatus and hydraulic fracturing pumps fresh from the testing rigors of the field, ensuring their efficiency and reliability. The CRE also features huge high pressure wash bays and can deal with the repair of a wide array of Upstream equipment, from mud shakers to coiled tubing units.
IKTVA’s vision centers on mandatory “local content development” of suppliers and contractors that prioritizes the purchase of goods and services from a local supplier base and looks to double the percentage of locally manufactured energy related goods and services to 70% by 2021.
New business model
At the opening ceremony, Nasser said, “Schlumberger’s decision to invest in this regional world-scale facility in Saudi Arabia underlines the Kingdom’s key position as the epicenter of the global energy industry and also as an attractive destination for investors.”
In addition to supporting Saudi Aramco’s IKTVA program to increase local content across our supply chain, this center creates jobs and enables development opportunities for talented Saudis in the energy and other related sectors.
“Being the largest of its kind in the world, it is part of a new business model for enhanced service delivery, and I am proud to see highly qualified, specialized Saudi engineers and technicians doing work that is critical to maintaining Saudi Arabia’s position as the world’s leading supplier of energy,” Nasser said.
In his inauguration address, Al Qahtani cited three reasons for the importance of the inauguration and underlined a commitment to reliability in the company’s business.
“Our relationship with Schlumberger goes back decades,” he said. “Schlumberger is a strategic service provider for our Upstream business, and their collaboration with our Upstream Advanced Research Center aligns with our strategy of becoming a creator of world-class technologies.
“This center will help Schlumberger become even more innovative, reliable, and efficient, which is an essential component of our own response to the current low oil price environment,” he added.
الاستفسارات الإعلامية
جميع استفسارات وسائل الإعلام يتم التعامل معها من قبل إدارة الإعلام والتواصل التنفيذي في أرامكو - قسم العلاقات الإعلامية. الظهران - المملكة العربية السعودية
