Winner Name: Amr Heikal
Winning Title: New technologies that achieve operational excellence, improve productivity and minimize impact to the environment.
Winning Organization: Kuwait Oil Company – KOC & Baker Hughes
Brief Biography about the Winner:
Amr Heikal has more than 27 years of experience working in the Oil and Gas industry for such companies as Halliburton, Schlumberger, and Baker Hughes. He has worked in most Middle East countries, the United Kingdom, all North Africa, and Azerbaijan. During his career, he has focused on new technology developments that reduce pollution and optimize operation.
Amr is a fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK; a Full Member – Sigma Xi, The International Scientific Research Honor Society, Chartered and Fellow Manager CMgr FCMI, Chartered Management Institute, Charter Chemist CChem at the Royal Society of Chemistry, Fellow and Registered scientist with Institute of Science and Technology FIScT RSci and Associated Fellow with Institution of Chemical Engineers AFIChemE.
His contribution while working at Kuwait Drilling Fluids resulted in that company winning a 2020 Gold Stevie Award for their new High-Performance Water-Base Fluid, an environmentally friendly alternative to oil-based Non-Aqueous Fluids (NAFs) for drilling challenging wells. Again his contribution resulted in winning both Kuwait Oil Company – KOC & Baker Hughes in 2021 Gold Stevie Award for New technologies that achieve operational excellence, improve productivity and minimize impact to the environment. Amr Heikal Chair Company/Organization & Achievement Awards Judging Committee for 2021 The Middle East & North Africa Stevie® Awards.
On a personal level, Amr recently received an award from the Kuwait government for returning a very valuable painting that he had found after it was stolen.
Stevie Award-Winning Case Study:
A sustainability-driven innovation by Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) and Baker Hughes
Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) has used historically Non-Aqueous Fluid (NAF) Diesel based to drill the challenging shale formations, mainly due to lubricity and wellbore stability requirements. As part of the government environmental improvement strategy, Kuwait Oil Company and Baker Hughes identified potentially fit-for-purpose High-Performance Water Base Mud (HPWBM) as the most suitable, environmentally acceptable alternative to Diesel Based Fluid.
The fluid design considered the following factors:
• Chemical inhibition to reactive shale formations
• Density profile prediction
• Bridging technology to retain wellbore strength
• Downhole fluids modeling and rheological parameters
• Highly lubricious to minimize torque and drag
• Hole cleaning
• Minimize Reservoir damage
Results:
Since the initial trial that was conducted in 2015. Between 2015 – 2020 more wells have been drilled using High-Performance Water Base Drilling Fluids. The performance of the fluid system very much matching the Oil Base System. In most cases, the customized fluid proved its success against set KPI.
Final Quote
The nominees in this year’s entry were extremely impressive and nicely represent the region’s entrepreneurial spirit. The key success for the development in our region is to focus on research and development to develop new products, processes or services, or improve those that already exist.