Saudi Aramco Work Values

Daily Duties at Saudi Aramco:

In Saudi Arabia, except for Ras Tanura Refinery and the various crude stablizers around Saudi, all of the other refineries, Riyadh, Jeddah, Rabigh, Yanbu, and Jubail, were owned by Samarec, which was transferred to Saudi Aramco in 1993. Soon after arriving in Kingdom, I was assigned to the Riyadh Refinery where I was given all of the new projects, other than just maintaining daily operations, which was about 60% of all of the work being carried out at that time, and virtually all of the investment. In this position I was located intermittently at the Bechtel, Parsons, and Petrocon office where I: • Finalized the movement of the two remaining Horton Spheres to larger spill areas with higher, hard-surfaced berms.($250K) • Completely upgraded and de-bottlenecked the Waste Water Stripper unit, which included installing a man-way and packing in, and adding a spray nozzles to the column; installing a coalescent pad and modifying the weirs, baffles, level control, and drains in the KO drum, and re-piping the unit. All of the materials and work were provided by components from Glitsch in Italy, and field service personnel from UK for $275K. • Upgraded the entire cooling system for Refinery 2, which included adding parallel cooling streams, adding fin-fan and shell & tube exchangers, and an entire, new cooling tower and associated piping. ($1.2M) • Converted the FCCU regen air compressor turbine driver from gasoil to fuel gas. This included a 6" gas line from the refinery limits to the turbine, and modifying its internals ($320K). • Inherited the condensate recovery project for Refinery 1 which was cancelled after the design was complete and just as we were evaluating the bidding. • I completed the design of the condensate recovery system for Refinery 2 (the highly integrated design of the two refineries made them appear as one refinery) and was finishing up that design when I left. However, all collection sites and tie-ins were done during the T&I so that the system could go on stream when complete ($380K approved). • I was given the Design Basis Scoping Paper for the Yield Improvement Project for the refinery, which was priced at $10M, and I was supposed to start the Preliminary Engineering. However, I could see immediately that the project could never be done for that amount. And with the help of a Cal Tec (expat) process engineer I was working with at the local Parsons' representative I was able to get Preliminary Design funds approved for a $17M OOM price. This project continued after I was reassigned to the Joint Venture Marketing Coordinator position and was broadened to $37M. • I was asked to provide a wash water injection nozzle to the Hydrodesulphurization Unit overhead to cool it down, which I did by adding a positive displacement pump and a nozzle connection to the overhead line ($34K). This system operates at approximately 1,470 psi and 300-400 DegC. During the Riyadh Refinery’s major T&I, I ended up having Contract staff of 100 Design Engineers reporting through three Project Managers, and 340 site engineers, draftsmen, skilled craftsmen, and laborers reporting through four Site Superintendents. In addition to my own work being complete, I was seconded to the work of two other Managers after all of my work had been done on time. This additional work ended up giving me almost all of the investment and expense work being done on this major T&I, and I was given complete responsibility for the Project Management Team during the final days of that shutdown. In addition to Riyadh Refinery, as a refinery design, construction, and maintenance expert, was brought in to manage major projects during critical downtime at the Jeddah and Rabigh Refineries in Saudi Arabia. At Rabigh, I started by generating dozens of field sketches so that all of the modifications could be carried out during the T&I because the then-defunct Contractor who had done all of the engineering had done all of the work using Drawing Record Books in their offices, virtually never entering the refinery. After that, I spent all of my time assisting PE's ensuring that all of the major jobs got done by advising as necessary. In Jeddah, I was assigned to two emergency shutdowns and their major T&I. On the emergency shutdowns, I supervised crews on any jobs that needed looking after. On the T&I, I gave support to the young Project Engineer who was tying in his new high-level Main Flare system, and I stayed with him while he/we air pressure-tested the 36-inch line.

What they like about Saudi Aramco:

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Tags

Engineering, Management, Project, Systems, Organization, SAP, Budgeting, Documentation, Help Desk, Legacy

Skills

SAP, Budgeting, Documentation, Help Desk, Legacy

These are some of the questions we asked our climbers about their experiences with Saudi Aramco: