BOTH IN TOP 5% OF GRADUATING CLASS

Given the industry’s outsized importance to the economy, petrochemical programmes in the country’s engineering schools are reserved for students with the highest marks. Both women were in the top 5 per cent of their graduating class at Basra University in 2018.

In school they became awestruck by drilling. To them it was a new world, with it’s own language: “spudding’’ was to start drilling operations, a “Christmas tree’’ was the very top of a wellhead, and “dope’’ just meant grease. Every work day plunges them deep into the mysterious affairs below the Earth’s crust, where they use tools to look at formations of minerals and mud, until the precious oil is found. “Like throwing a rock into water and studying the ripples,’’ explained Rawthan.