Amit Singh, Managing Director, Schlumberger Qatar • Interview

One key attribute of Schlumberger’s success is helping to ensure it creates a sustainable future for everyone via its technologies.

What were the highlights of 2020?

The biggest highlight was absolutely how our people stepped up and performed in uncertain and challenging circumstances. We had to quickly refashion our supply chain and manage our upstream oil and gas operations in an environment where many people had to work from home or in different shifts. The resilience of our people, their ability to understand this challenge, and quickly work as one big team to deliver high business performance was the highlight. The health and safety of our people—employees and contractors—is our highest priority. Schlumberger Qatar’s safety record in 2020 was the best it has ever been, as was the quality of our service. During the pandemic, we also introduced new technology for the North Field Expansion Project to improve drilling and completion performance. At Schlumberger, our ambition is to be the performance partner of choice for our customers and the industry. In the oil and gas industry, digital transformation is not just working from home. We work with large amounts of data: seismic, geological, and simulation information that needs to be captured and used to inform better decisions. We are collaborating with Qatar Petroleum to deploy and leverage digital capabilities to increase team performance and maximize asset value through new digital technologies and integrated oilfield deployment for land oilfield by end of the year 2021.

Where do you see growth coming for Schlumberger Qatar moving forward?

We are a major part of the North Field Upstream Expansion Project. Many of these projects have already started. Most of our personnel growth is around the North Field Expansion Project. Schlumberger Qatar also supports QP, QPD, Dolphin, Total & North Oil Company in its drilling activities and development planning. There are many growth opportunities for us in both gas and oil.

How are environmental and safety concerns impacting your industry in Qatar?

We always give the highest priority to environmental protection and the safety of our people. We are proud that our company is the first in upstream exploration and production services to commit to setting a science-based target to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. This is significant, because it challenges us with targets verified by the Science Based Targets initiative, not only to reduce our fuel and power consumption, but to also work with our suppliers and customers to reduce their consumption as well. We will set our reduction target, in line with SBTi’s defined criteria, in 2021. There are many areas where we can contribute, both in reducing our own footprint and helping our customers to reduce their emissions. We actively participate in carbon capture and sequestration projects, as our customers are working on those, and we are supporting them as a technology provider, having identified around 100 technologies in our portfolio that can reduce environmental impacts. We are also looking to collaborate with the ministry, where there is an initiative to plant trees. A key attribute of Schlumberger’s success and that of the wider industry is ensuring we proactively reduce emissions.

What will be new in 2021?

People will remain the key to delivering outstanding performance moving forward. We need to make sure we train local talent in the country and have the right foundation built to ensure they are successful. The second key is localization of the supply chain, as part of Qatar Tawteen initiatives—ensuring we have second and third degrees of manufacturing and that oilfield commodity is localized, which gives us greater resilience during operations.