It has been just under a year since we spoke to Abdullah Alkhorayef, CEO of the Alkhorayef Group’s Commercial Division, an international conglomerate that is also a family business. Since we last spoke, the business has been going well, but the main purpose of our meeting is for him to introduce us to Mohammed Doghmi, President of Alkhorayef Group company, Alkhorayef Petroleum.
“Alkhorayef Petroleum has proven to be a rockstar company recently,” Alkhorayef says. “It has done a great job when it comes to the structuring of the company. It is really taking us out of our comfort zone and helping us focus on the future.”
Alkhorayef Petroleum is certainly a trailblazer. It is one of the few Saudi companies that is truly international, operating on three continents, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. It is also a technology company engineering, manufacturing, and servicing its own in-house designed technologies. It is this thirst to innovate that has allowed the company to compete with world-class companies such as Baker Hughes and Schlumberger over the past 30 years across the markets it operates in.
The company has been in business for almost 40 years, starting in its home country of Saudi Arabia and then expanding into adjacent countries including Kuwait and Iraq, before moving further into Africa at the turn of the 21st century.
“In 2010 and 2011 we took the risk of establishing a branch in Colombia, then into Ecuador in 2016, and more recently we expanded into Mexico in 2019, signing a deal with Pemex, the country’s national oil company,” Doghmi tells us. “The core business we have is what we call ‘Electrical Submersible Pumps’, designed, engineered and manufactured by Alkhorayef Petroleum Company across three manufacturing centres.”
Beyond the core business, Alkhorayef Petroleum also works in providing early production facilities, primarily in Kuwait, building facilities to process oil, gas, and water on behalf of its clients. We have a solid track record of building, operating, and maintaining several world-class production facilities.
Then, four years ago, the company initiated a third line of business, called Wireline logging. This is a service-based business line that is more data-focused. This segment of the business is devoted to monitoring the health of oil and gas wells and reservoirs; by measuring key parameters such as corrosion, well integrity, production profiles, reservoir saturation and more. This branch of the company has spent two years building up its technology portfolio and is now fully operational in KSA with ARAMCO.
Bringing Innovation to Oil and Gas
Of course, as a technology-orientated business, innovation is a key part of Alkhorayef Petroleum’s processes, powered by the company’s own Research and Development centres.
“Our primary one is in Shanghai, China. We started that up almost 20 years ago focused on mechanical engineering for all of our downhole ESP rotating equipment. A second facility designs and engineers surface electrical equipment focusing on electrical and electronic engineering was established in our Dammam centre in KSA,” Doghmi explains. “We cater to technology-focused areas by understanding what the market and operations need. We carry out a lot of activity at the well site. When there are issues, we try to understand those issues and work out solutions to resolve them. We also pride ourselves on our collaborative approach to technology development with our customers. We have many ongoing collaborations, especially around operating in harsh environments in the Middle East. A lot of the fields have high H2S (Hydrogen Sulphide) content which is very corrosive, and we have several solutions jointly developed with our key partners to address those challenges.”
Different locations bring different development challenges with them. While in the Middle East, Alkhorayef Petroleum is looking to address harsh environmental challenges, in Latin America the firm is collaborating with customers to address production in heavy oil, high temperature and high asphaltenes wells, developing specific systems to overcome those challenges.
And beyond both of those research sectors, Alkhorayef Petroleum is also engaged in pure blue-sky research.
“Here we try to bring disruptive technologies to the market,” Doghmi says. “We have some ongoing research projects that we believe will revolutionise the Electrical Submersible Pump business.”
Of course, a key area of development for any business right now is sustainability. Regarding its ESG strategy, the company has a few initiatives in place regarding digitalisation and developing technologies that reduce the company’s carbon footprint.
“Those are things we care about and we are looking at them in detail,” Doghmi says. “We are digitalising our manufacturing centres, getting rid of all paper transactions in the factory. Concerning our equipment and operations, we are also looking at artificial intelligence development to monitor the health of our pumps for event detection, failure prediction and prevention. We want to act and do remedial work before the equipment fails. That is ongoing work.”
Alkhorayef Petroleum already has pilot projects in Colombia, and Egypt which it expects to commercialise early next year.
“We are reducing our carbon footprint and CO2 emissions by developing specific technologies to reduce energy consumption from Overhead lines or diesel generators,” Doghmi explains. “We have developed new permanent magnet motors, as opposed to induction motors, and these typically have anywhere between 15 and 20% more efficiency. As a natural consequence, we can reduce the power needed, and therefore reduce energy consumption.”
Developing the Skills for Tomorrow’s Tech
As well as developing the latest technological solutions, Alkhorayef Petroleum also needs to ensure its people are well-versed in that technology.
“One challenge we face is competency development, because these are technology-based activities we need the right people and the right talent,” Doghmi insists. “The bulk of our recruiting is done locally, as much as possible. We have training programmes to address technicians and engineers for the local markets. We also have programmes where we recruit in one country, and for the development of employees, we expose them internationally early in their careers. We take them from Colombia to Saudi Arabia and vice versa. With that mindset, they will become future leaders of the company, with a global view of the business.”
As for the future, Alkhorayef Petroleum looks set to continue acting as a “rockstar company” as the need for its products continues to grow.
“We foresee growth across all regions in Africa and the Middle East. There is a huge demand for our products. As you know, most of the oil reservoirs across the world will have pressure declining naturally over time with production, and those fields will need an artificial lift mechanism,” Doghmi points out. “We are in a very critical segment of activity in oil services that we know will grow because of the need to put some energy in these reservoirs to continue to economically produce oil and an ESP is a preferred mechanism.”
The company will also continue to push the technological vanguard in the industry.
“We continue to innovate in technology development. Those technologies are helping us address challenges, gain market share, and become a solution provider, not just an equipment manufacturer,” Doghmi says. “We have put together our five-year plan and we see ourselves almost doubling in size over the next five years.”
It is clear talking to Doghmi that he is as excited to be part of the Alkhorayef Group’s unique conglomerate as Abdullah Alkhorayef is to have him.
“Working for a family-owned business in Saudi Arabia has been a phenomenal experience,” he says. “The engagement with shareholders and the freedom to innovate and bring change has been fantastic. That allowed our global teams to deliver excellent results in a relatively short time. In contrast to the typical corporate environment that requires many levels of approval to make decisions. We have built a company that is a lot more agile and responsive with tremendous autonomy and empowerment within the organisation.”
