Saad Al-Driweesh
A 36-year veteran of the oil and gas industry, Saad Al-Driweesh, holds a BS degree in petroleum engineering from the King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia. At Saudi Aramco, he is responsible for maintaining the flow of 6 Bscf/d of gas supply to three giant Saudi Aramco gas plants that provide the gas feed to the country’s power generation and water desalination plants as well as the country’s petrochemical facilities.
Leadership: Among Al-Driweesh’s accomplishments is his leadership role in the 2011 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) production and well services workshop in Oman. The GCC is a political and economic alliance of six countries in the Arabian Peninsula that includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. At the 2011 workshop, Al-Driweesh joined other experts from the region to discuss issues and challenges for production and services in the energy sector, focusing on new developments, technologies and techniques.
Within Saudi Aramco, Al-Driweesh serves as a champion of a recently formed gas well integrity survey focus group that was created to ensure accountability and strict compliance with gas well integrity programs to guarantee healthy wells that can meet gas demand and avoid well control and emergency situations.
Al-Driweesh was involved in the design phase of the first Saudi Aramco mega-gas compression projects – two gas plants that are processing 2.5 Bscf/d of non-associated gas. He participated in a first-ever wellhead gas compressor technology assessment for gas well applications to collect lessons learned to develop improved understanding prior to the megaproject compression commissioning. He also serves as a committee member of Saudi Aramco’s first gas storage program.
Al-Driweesh provided guidance, leadership and vision for the successful execution of the Southern Area gas program in a period of increasingly complex well intervention activities and a significantly higher level of operations. His role required daily cooperation and negotiations with many organizations, including well completion, gas production, reservoir characterization, and drilling and workover departments as well as numerous service providers.
During his career with the company, Al-Driweesh has been recognized at multiple levels –Department, Admin Area and Business Line – both regionally and internationally for his contributions and achievements in the areas of production engineering and operations.
Accomplishments: One of Al-Driweesh’s priorities is investing heavily in the company’s future in the form of mentoring. He currently is active in arranging Saudi Council of Engineers knowledge-sharing sessions and workshops to share lessons learned from experienced engineering firms as well as the country’s engineering educational institutes.
Al-Driweesh is helping to develop future leaders and commits considerable time to coaching successors and empowering and guiding aspiring younger employees. He has successfully trained a replacement for every position he has held during his career at Aramco, working not only to teach the responsibilities of the job, but developing successors who will continue the pursuit of excellence.
His goal in ensuring knowledge transfer to young engineers is to prepare the company to overcome future oil and gas challenges. Al-Driweesh is proud that many of the engineers in leadership roles in the Production Engineering, Producing Operations and Well Services and Completion departments previously were members of his engineering teams.
Perspective: “Sharing my oil and gas experience with the young and talented Saudi workforce, coupled with new technology transfer and development, will help to overcome current and future production challenges and push the envelope to achieve a prosperous future for Saudi Aramco in alignment with the ambitious Saudi Arabia Vision 2030.”