Ahmad El Tannir

Al Masaood’s energy strategy sees it working hard to continuously introduce new capabilities and technologies to support its end users and help them meet their objectives.

What role do you see Al Masaood playing in contributing to the UAE’s efforts to move ahead with its green transition?

Being originally a major oilfield service and supplies local player, our company has successfully managed to diversify its customer base throughout its history by growing activities that span not only the oil and gas segment, but other energy segments by addressing operations of process facilities such as conventional power generation, desalination, solar and recently the nuclear by the mean of a maintenance service agreement for Barakah plant. By doing so, on one hand, our company keeps leveraging on the existence of an extended reach of customers to which the green transition applies, thanks to two business units in particular: the plant maintenance services and the process supplies. The positive challenge today is about strengthening our position in these growing segments by better addressing such customers needs. This strategy leads us to the following step, which takes maximizing our efforts on continuously introducing new scope of capabilities and technologies that continuously and improvingly support our end users in meeting their green objectives. Finally, this also implies for a company like ours to penetrate emerging clean energy segments that are set to grow in the near future and that will enable the country’s net zero emissions target by 2050.

How has the ADIPEC conference helped inspire Al Masaood’s energy strategies going forward?

The UAE is set to be well positioned in this energy transition journey for the years to come, being already host for over 70% of all installed renewable energy capacity in our region thanks to notable achievements made during the past decade. The ADIPEC conference emphasizes the opportunities and challenges with regards to energy transition for oil and gas operators through an inclusive approach that provides the supporting tools to the entire industry payers to move towards this direction. After embarking on renewable energy path a decade ago with first solar power plants, the UAE expanded into nuclear to increase power generation capacities, which first plant came into operation in 2020. Today and going forward by shifting toward lower carbon energies, the country has a vision of leadership in clean hydrogen production driven by projects involving major energy players like ADNOC. Being an active downstream service provider and process equipment distributor, we have witnessed a series of recent announcements that gave us important indications on the line for the upcoming years: the country’s ambition of becoming one of the world’s largest and lowest cost producers of low-carbon hydrogen; a hydrogen consumer in downstream segments, as well as projects toward making the UAE a competitive market for hydrogen supplies and related services.

What are some of the transformative technologies Al Masaood is developing to further improve its operational capacities?

Being primarily involved in oilfield services and drilling activities in particular, our primary objective is to work toward becoming an integrated service provider in the coming years. Hence, we work close with selected partners that have the capability to contribute along with us in fulfilling this goal. Nonetheless, and in line with the market trends and our industry’s objectives, we constantly keep looking for disruptive technologies that fits our clients’ operational challenges: this includes but not limited to energy efficiency, carbon-capture and storage, enhanced oil recovery, integrity engineering, and the deployment of digital technologies that enable safety and productivity enhancement for field operators.

What is Al Masaood’s approach to fostering the best human capital and recruiting from within the UAE?

Taking into consideration the current global situation, it is more sustainable to develop accumulated knowledge and skills withing the market of UAE. We have a strong focus on human development and have allocated significant shares of our budgets to human capital. A budget that would be utilized not only to recruit, but to develop, train, and form a solid local human capital with international standards and vast knowledge.