A newly formed partnership between Saudi Aramco and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) has a goal of accelerating the Kingdom’s transition toward a knowledge-based economy.
The Saudi Aramco-KAUST Partnership Committee held its first meeting on Dec. 7 and was co-chaired by Mohammed Y. Al Qahtani, acting business line head of Upstream for Saudi Aramco, and Jean Frechet, KAUST vice president of Research.
In their opening remarks, Al Qahtani and Frechet underscored the importance of the strategic partnership that bonds the two organisations.
They said both organisations shared a clear goal of creating focused, robust, tangible and result-oriented collaborative activities and were committed to creating transformational and high value-added outcomes for both the Kingdom and the world.
Al Qahtani and Frechet pointed to the excellent progress that has already been made, with ongoing collaboration between the faculty, researchers, scientists, and students at KAUST, and their Saudi Aramco counterparts.
This has led to the creation of strong professional ties that are achieving a broad spectrum of positive outcomes.
The meeting included presentations on the new Saudi Aramco Research and Development Center at KAUST, which is currently under development. This important initiative is expected to produce groundbreaking technologies and research that leverage KAUST’s innovation ecosystem and maximise Saudi Aramco’s research and development portfolio.
The new cutting-edge 18,300m2 facility will cater for the important domains of: oil and gas network integrity; chemicals; carbon management; fuel technology; hydrocarbon recovery; computational modeling and environmental protection.
When fully operational, the centre will accommodate 139 dedicated full-time researchers and support staff. This new milestone investment will help in creating global innovative technological solutions to address the energy industry’s evolving and complex challenges, according to Aramco.
Speaking following the meeting, Al Qahtani said, “We are looking forward to further sustaining and institutionalizing our strategic partnership, and the newly inaugurated Upstream Petroleum Centre at KAUST represents an opportunity to leverage our collaboration.”
