“A professional is a person who can do his best at a time when he doesn't
particularly feel like it” -- Alistair Cooke (American journalist and
commentator, b.1908)
A little known fact, in the West, at least, is that Saudi Aramco has been
developing talent for over a decade, using a set of structured programs. This development effort is producing
impressive results. One example is
Mustafa Al-Ali, currently directing the development of three advanced research
centers in North America
TIP: When
you find it, download it. This post, for example, draws heavily from a Saudi
Aramco Dimensions article that I found online a couple of years ago. I am fortunate that I downloaded it, because
it is no longer available on the Web.
The article, titled Specializing in success: Award-winning young geophysicist on
fast track appears below in its entirety.
It is particularly significant, because it provides valuable background
information on the man currently guiding the development of Saudi Aramco’s
three U.S. based advanced research centers.
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Specializing in
success: Award-winning young geophysicist on fast track
Written by Femke Baudoin and Rick Snedeker
Saudi Aramco Dimensions, Spring 2006
DELFT, The Netherlands — A bright, highly
motivated achiever such as Mustafa Naser Al-Ali is precisely what Saudi Aramco
had in mind when it created its comprehensive suite of professional development programs
for Saudi employees.
The 35-year-old geophysicist and current Advanced Degree Program (ADP)
candidate is on track to receive his Ph.D. in early 2007 at the Netherland’s
Delft University of Technology, also known as TU Delft, in the arcane field of
seismic data acquisition design and land seismic imaging — after already
earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees and some impressive awards along the
way.
Al-Ali previously graduated from the company’s Professional Development Program
(1995) in three years, and the Specialist Development Program (2004) in one of
the company’s key disciplines. He has been an ADP candidate since 2003.
In recognition of his scientific contributions in the area of seismic data
acquisition, Al-Ali in November 2005, in Houston, Texas, in the United States,
was bestowed with the international Society of Exploration Geophysicists’
prestigious J. Clarence Karcher Award. Al-Ali is only the third young Saudi
scientist to receive the award, after Tariq Al-Khalifa (from King Abdulaziz
City for Science and Technology) in 1998 and Mohammed Al-Saggaf (from Saudi
Aramco) in 2001.
Al-Ali also was named Saudi Aramco’s Geophysicist of the Year in 1998. In 2002,
he received the Saudi Aramco Exploration Innovation Award as well as the
company’s Corporate Innovation Award.
“Mustafa combines practical experience with excellent theoretical insight,”
said Prof. A.J. “Guus” Berkhout, a geophysics professor at TU Delft, program
director of Delft’s Delphi Consortium and Al-Ali’s main adviser at Delft.
Berkhout has developed a large number of new concepts and algorithms now
commercially used in the upstream oil and gas industry, and he has written
hundreds of scientific papers and a number of books on geophysics.
Al-Ali is speeding along his development path exactly
as Saudi Aramco envisioned for its most promising young employees. He did
entry-level work in the Geophysical Technology Division when he joined the
company in 1992, after earning a bachelor of science degree with honors in
geophysics at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM). The next
year, he traveled to Houston for eight months of training at Halliburton, a
major global energy services company.
While working full-time for Saudi Aramco, Al-Ali earned a master’s in geology
at KFUPM, with a thesis on nearsurface velocity modeling using geostatistical
techniques. During his Saudi Aramco career, he has learned his craft from the
bottom up. He has been a 2D (two-dimensional) seismic processor and a 3D
(three-dimensional) interpreter, and he has supervised seismic crews in the
field, designed acquisition parameters and written seismic crew contracts. “I
have covered all areas of Saudi Arabia in my work,” he said, “including some
operation sites in the Arabian Gulf, all the deserts, the Rub‘ al-Khali,
Shaybah, far to the south, north to Qasim, and to the Red Sea west. I am indeed
privileged to have had that experience, by directly observing Saudi Aramco
various operational sites. Now I know what options won’t work. And, I will
always think of continuing improvement, including improving my knowledge and
performance quality.”
Thinking of knowledge improvement led him to Delft,
which he selected as the institution for his Ph.D. precisely because no other
Saudis before him had.
“I had not only applied to Delft University of Technology, but also to MIT, the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and to Stanford, and I was accepted to
all,” Al-Ali said. “It was a tough choice, but after having had a close look at
the different programs, I decided that Delft best matched my specialty area.
“And I thought, why don’t I add to the knowledge of my colleagues at Saudi
Aramco by bringing to the table another geophysical philosophy from a different
wellreputed institution,” he said. Al-Ali also respects the historical Dutch
link with the petroleum industry from its infancy and the major contributions
it made to related science fields.
“Technically, TU Delft is excellent; you’re dealing with very knowledgeable
people,” Al-Ali explained. “And because it’s not a profit-making institution,
what’s important to them is not the money, it’s the research you do. So, if
you’re not performing well, they will say ‘goodbye.’” Now
there are three more Saudi Aramco employees at Delft pursuing their Ph.D.
degrees in different disciplines: Ghaithan A. Al-Muntasheri, petroleum
engineering; Mohammad S. Al-Bannagi, geophysics; and Bandar H. Alsolami,
chemical engineering.
Al-Ali’s research is part of ongoing science at Delft’s Delphi Consortium,
which collaborates with major oil and gas companies to develop practical
solutions for real-world problems. Twenty-eight companies are sponsors of the
consortium, including Saudi Aramco, Shell, Chevron, British Petroleum,
ExxonMobil, Statoil and others.
“The aim of my research is that my approach for seismic data acquisition will
be accepted as an industry standard,” Al-Ali said. Seismic data acquisition is
the science of obtaining seismic-wave data from the earth to locate subsurface
geologic structures that might contain oil and gas deposits. “The relationship
of Delft University of Technology with Saudi Aramco is a very close one,”
Berkhout said. “Members of the Delphi team often visit Saudi Aramco’s office,
and many Delphi solutions are successfully implemented to improve the company’s
technological capabilities.”
Panos Kelamis, Saudi Aramco’s chief geophysicist, is the company’s
representative on the 10-member Delphi board, chaired by Berkhout.
One of Delphi’s focus areas is seismic imaging. “Through the years, seismic
imaging has become a critical technology in exploration and production,
allowing detailed visualization of the reservoir properties of new prospects
and producing fields at large depths,” according to information on Delphi’s web
site. “To meet the challenge of capacity and reserves, the oil industry needs
to improve its imaging capability far beyond current limits. The mission of the
Delphi Consortium is to give a significant contribution to realize this
ambition.”
And the data acquisition part of seismic imaging is where Al-Ali shines in his
research. He said 90 percent of his time at Delft is spent on research; the
rest on course work. “They call them knowledge-broadening courses,” he said.
In lay terms, Al-Ali is studying the best ways to obtain the most useful
seismic-wave data to image earth’s subterranean rock — in other words, by
sending signals in the right places on the surface and recording them also on
the right surface places after they bounce from the subsurface rock layers, a
clearer “picture” of the characteristics of earth’s subterranean rock emerges.
Al-Ali explains that understanding the shallow earth’s layers, several hundred
meters deep, is crucial for inland seismic imaging. This allows better imaging
of the critical deeper zones, down to seven kilometers — and will point the way
to the most promising oil and gas reservoirs.
Al-Ali has developed a patented system recently
approved by the U.S. Patent Office (US 6,982,928 B2) to improve understanding
the shallow subsurface layers. It utilizes measurements obtained by a vibratory
seismic source control system. Such measurements are used to invert for sound
velocity at the vibration locations and then generate a velocity model of the
shallow layers that can be used for seismic data processing.
In addition, his composite-design idea for sparse 3D seismic data acquisition
developed in 2000, which is still being used by the company, has led to the
recording of seismic data over tens of thousands of square kilometers,
demonstrating the success of Saudi Aramco’s aggressive 3D reconnaissance
exploration program. “The composite design — using a more comprehensive
cross-network of source vibration locations — solved the problem of not being
able to image the shallow layers when using conventional sparse 3D designs.
Imaging the shallow layers allows you to have more accurate visualization of
the deeper layers and eliminates the risk of seeing false structures,” Al-Ali
said.
“The primary reason for our successes, I must say, is that over the past years
we have received all the support we needed from management,” he said. “Besides,
collaboration with colleagues and working as a team is important, especially
when a new concept is conceived, and we had to move from the warm work zones
into less comfortable ones before the apparent mystery becomes mastery and the
new approach is revealed to be more efficient.”
Berkhout said, “Mustafa has successfully demonstrated that distortion effects
on seismic data, caused by complex near-surface layers (meaning “shallow”
layers), should not be solved by aiming at estimating geological models of
these near-surface layers. Distortion effects should be directly estimated from
the seismic data itself.
“First results of his excellent thesis work do
confirm that on land data with a complex near-surface, seismic acquisition and
processing need to be closely interrelated and that imaging should be
data-driven,” Berkhout continued. “Mustafa’s common focal point approach to
land seismic imaging introduces a new paradigm in the acquisition- processing
cycle that may resolve many of the longlasting problems we face on land. While
he is doing his Ph.D., he has established a major joint project between Saudi
Aramco and Delft University aimed at resolving the imaging and time-to-depth
challenges in areas with a complex near-surface.”
Al-Ali’s research has resulted in innovative breakthroughs and concepts that
will allow acquisition of more information on complex near-surface earth
conditions and assist in designing 3D surveys.
During his research at Delft, Al-Ali said, “I have diversified my knowledge
greatly and expanded into new areas.” Wider thinking, he said, can be applied
to any problem. Al-Ali has authored many papers in technical journals and has
presented at many international symposia. He is an active member of the
European Association Geoscientists and Engineers, and the Society of
Exploration Geophysicists. “Geophysics always keeps you in an innovative mode,”
he said. “That’s what I like about it. It depends on the art and the skills of
the scientist. I keep vying for continuing improvement — even beyond what I can
envision.”
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Al-Ali’s dissertation, titled Land seismic data acquisition and preprocessing: an operator
solution to the near-surface problem, is available for download at:
http://repository.tudelft.nl/view/ir/uuid%3Abaa60972-94c0-4c74-8642-6015db8e61a0/
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Here’s another TIP: invite me to join your LinkedIn network. My
profile is located at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeansteinhardtresearch
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