Iraqi women buck the trend to don hard hats at rig sites
They are testing the limits imposed by conservative communities
It’s nearly dawn and Zainab Amjad has been up all night working on an oil rig in southern Iraq. She lowers a sensor into the black depths of a well until sonar waves detect the presence of the crude that fuels her country’s economy.
Elsewhere in the oil-rich Basra, Ayat Rawthan is supervising the assembly of large drill pipes. These will bore into the Earth and send crucial data on rock formations to screens sitting a few feet away that she will decipher.
The women, both 24, are among just a handful who have eschewed the dreary office jobs typically handed to female petroleum engineers in Iraq. Instead, they chose to become trailblazers in the country’s oil industry, donning hard hats to take up the gruelling work at rig sites.
Every field feels like going to a new country
They are part of a new generation of talented Iraqi women who are testing the limits imposed by their conservative communities.
The hours Amjad and Rawthan spend in the oil fields are long and the weather unforgiving. Often they are asked what — as women — they are doing there.
“They tell me the field environment only men can withstand,’’ said Amjad, who spends six weeks at a time living at the rig site. “If I gave up, I’d prove them right.’’
Every well presents a set of challenges” some required more pressure to pump, others were laden with poisonous gas. “Every field feels like going to a new country,’’ said Amjad.
‘Hire me, watch’
To work in the field, Amjad, the daughter of two doctors, knew she had to land a job with an international oil company — and to do that, she would have to stand out. State-run enterprises were a dead end” there, she would be relegated to office work.
When China’s CPECC came to look for new hires, she was the obvious choice. Later, when Texas-based Schlumberger sought wireline engineers she jumped at the chance.She passed one difficult exam after another to get to the final interview. Asked if she was certain she could do the job, she said: “Hire me, watch.’’
Rawthan, too, knew she would have to work extra hard to succeed. Once, when her team had to perform a rare “sidetrack’’ — drilling another bore next to the original — she stayed awake all night.
Rawthan also now works for Schlumberger, where she collects data from wells used to determine the drilling path later on. Relatives, friends and even teachers were discouraging: What about the hard physical work? The scorching Basra heat? Living at the rig site for months at a time? And the desert scorpions that roam the reservoirs at night?
“Many times my professors and peers laughed, `Sure, we’ll see you out there,’ telling me I wouldn’t be able to make it,’’ said Rawthan. “But this only pushed me harder.’’
Their parents were supportive, though. Rawthan’s mother is a civil engineer and her father, the captain of an oil tanker who often spent months at sea.
The work is not without danger. Protests outside oil fields led by angry local tribes and the unemployed can disrupt work and sometimes escalate into violence toward oil workers. But the women are willing to take on these hardships. Amjad barely has time to even consider them: It was 11 pm, and she was needed back at work. “Drilling never stops,’’ she said.