Thursday 28 March 2024
 
»
 
»
Story

Majeed Al Gassab and Mohammed Loch

Forum to discuss key oil and gas issues

Manama, July 17, 2014

Key issues facing the oil and gas sector in the region will be discussed at a forum being organized in Bahrain in September.

The 3rd annual Project Management Institute Arabian Gulf Chapter (PMI AGC)-DMS Energy Forum will be held on September 2 and 3.

“This year we put together yet another stimulating discussion focusing on key project challenges. The first subject is about hydrogen outsourcing. Traditionally in the West, refineries outsource their hydrogen needs, while in the Middle East they used to produce it themselves. However there are now some pioneers in the GCC, like Yasref, which has started to outsource its hydrogen needs,” said Abdul Majeed Al Gassab, president PMI AGC Bahrain region, in an interview.

The second motion will be covering various ideas on whether project owners should award their contract to the bidders based on quality or on price. “We see that lower-priced Korean and Chinese contractors winning increasingly more projects in the GCC region. Is this trend to continue? More project owners in the GCC are moving away from the lowest bid award strategy and looking more closely into the technical quality offered by the bidders to obtain the best value for money in project execution,” he said.

“We will then search for solutions and exchange ideas on how to avoid mega-projects overruns - one of the major challenges for any project manager. The experts from PMI and AACE will share their professional approaches to this task and EPC (engineering procurement and construction) contractors like Technip will offer their practical perspective on their way of tackling such risks.”

Al Gassab said the forth debate will be around managing centralised control rooms for green- and brown-field projects. Managing control rooms is a key part of the overall project management and this is where automation and project management come hand in hand. This is a particularly interesting subject for MAC (main automation contractor) services providers. Saudi Aramco and Qatar Petroleum will present on greenfield and brownfield projects respectively and Invensys will cover the lifecycle of the technology and its compliance with technical standards in years to come, he said.

Asked what would be potential benefits of participating in this event and who should be attending, Mohammed Loch, president AND CEO of DMS Global, said there is a direct benefit from tapping into the expert knowledge and exchange of potential solutions to key project management challenges.

The debate will enrich the delegates experience by offering excellent networking opportunities bringing together project owners, engineering contractors, construction contractors, technology providers, equipment manufacturers and suppliers, banks and investment companies, project management specialists and government institutions, he said.

Asked how the PMI AGC-DMS energy Forum debates are different, he said: “We wanted to create an event that would bring together heads of major projects from both NOCs and EPCs to discuss project management challenges. With every challenge there is always more than one solution. It doesn't necessarily mean that one solution is better than another - it just means there are different approaches to solving the same problem.

“The reason why we chose the debate format for this event is because we did not want to have a one-way dialogue typically present at the conferences. The debate format allows us to bring the teams of experts presenting pros and cons of each motion and to stimulate the debate through audience interaction. Each motion ends up with a vote for or against the motion, so we get a clear idea about the thoughts of the industry on the whole on these issues.”   -TradeArabia News Service
 




Tags: Oil | gas | project |

More Energy, Oil & Gas Stories

calendarCalendar of Events

Ads