Deepwater Well Engineering, Park Royal Hotel 26-30 March 2012

I attended a short course for drilling and well engineers on deepwater well engineering (the title). It was supposed to be a course for these engineers to bridge their knowledge of shallow water drilling to deepwater drilling. Deepwater means where drilling works are more than 500 feet. The urgency for this course is that, in the South East Asia region, deepwater drilling has started to grow.

It was a good course (although it can be better) for an outsider like me to have a perspective on the drilling activities and the related issues on it. I see some issues discussed in this forum can be resolved by doing research. Well, that was why I am there (with a fee close to RM15K). The other academic attended this course was an Assoc Prof from University of Stavanger, Norway who flew all the way from there!

If there is a blank paper, I cannot help myself from conteng-conteng on it.

My discussion group. The task was to analyze the Deepwater Horizon disaster report and to suggest preventive actions that can be taken to avoid the same mistakes in future operations. (L to R - Dusan from Talisman, Kopal from Schlumberger, Budi from Weatherford, Sijad from ???, me and Ismail from Shell). I am the only one who is a not a drilling engineer ;)

It was an intense discussions!

"My son has the same name as you so I have to take your photo for him..."

Group presentations.

There are also PETRONAS people, two of them graduated from UTP.

Kopal in action. Note I sat at the first row. A good practice as I was eager to learn.

The Professor. Jalal A Elhilal, a Syrian now UK/US citizen. Lives in Aberdeen, Scotland. Two MSc degrees and a PhD in Nuclear Chemistry. I asked him, "How do you become a drilling specialist when your PhD has nothing to do with it?" He replied, "I did the PhD because the French government wanted to do a research on nuclear related issues which I just took it but then drilling engineer is better as a job - it pays much better".

Nobody argued the best part of the course - buffet lunch!