In the midst of much gloom and doom, Yemenis were reminded earlier this February that Yemen does indeed hold a few untapped resources of its own: human potential.
This February, Nexen (upstream oil and gas company responsibly developing energy resources in the UK North Sea, offshore West Africa, the United States and Western Canada) published a report on its oil sands sector, announcing it had managed to develop a new technology which will enable the extraction of bitumen with minimum impact on the environment.
As explained by Nexen, “The oil sands industry is making great strides to reduce environmental impacts while increasing production. Nexen is involved with a number of research projects aimed at enhancing the steam-assisted gravity drainage (sAgd) process. These may be the tools that help us to be economically, environmentally and socially sustainable, and give Nexen a competitive advantage as we develop our resources.”
As it happens, such breakthrough was made possible by Mohammed al-Murayri, a Yemeni national. Not just a team player, the entire research-project was spearheading by al-Murayri; an achievement which hopefully will reinforce Yemenis in the belief that their people have a lot more to offer than they have been given credit for.
Accredited for his success, Nexen wrote, “For the past five years, Mohammed al-Murayri, Team lead-recovery Optimization has been the Technical project manager for Nexen’s es-sAgd and Ncg co-injection projects, spearheading a grassroots approach to implement es-sAgd and Ncg technologies to maximize the value of Nexen’s oil sands assets. Mohammed’s work has involved extensive reservoir modelling studies and lab experiments. His phd research at the University of Calgary involved designing, building and operating a world class lab facility and was culminated recently with the filing of three provisional patents.”
After everything that Yemen went through over the past three years, the crises, political fallouts, terror threats and instability, a success story might be exactly what the country needs to find its footing again.
We all do sometimes forget that Yemen’s best hope remains its people.