ADEL Khalil Almoayyed, acting chief executive and chairman of the Bapco board of directors is a veteran of Bahrain’s petroleum sector having first joined Bapco in 1973. Over four decades, Almoayyed has held senior positions throughout his career across all aspects of the business in Bahrain and overseas.

Prior to his February 2013 appointment as acting chief executive in Bapco, as well as his chairmanship of the board, Almoayyed was deputy chief executive officer at Tatweer Petroleum from 2009 until 2012. Tasked with increasing the output and reserves of the Bahrain field through enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies, Tatweer Petroleum is a joint venture between National Oil and Gas Authority (Noga), Occidental Petroleum Corporation (Oxy) and Mubadala Development Company (Mubadala).

Almoayyed has also held the key position as head of Bapco’s marketing business unit since the mid-eighties where he was responsible for executing corporate marketing policies and operations in domestic and international markets.

Almoayyed first joined Bapco in the upstream division in a supervisory role after graduating from Cairo University as a geologist in 1973. He then obtained a degree in petroleum engineering from University of Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1977and assumed a petroleum engineering position in the Bahrain field until the early 1980s. Work assignments during this period included secondment to Chevron, US in production engineering, drilling and reservoir engineering in the Rocky Mountain Area in the US.

In an exclusive interview with OGN, Almoayyed discusses Bapco’s achievements for 2012 and the challenges in implementing the various programmes and initiatives to modernise the refinery that will shape the oil company in the future.

Bapco is embarking on its most strategic initiatives, namely, Bapco modernisation programme (BMP) which is of vital importance to the national economy. The multi-billion dollar BMP is set to increase refinery capacity by 150-200 MBPD from the current name-plate capacity of 267 mbpd.

“We are continuing to move forward on the strategic BMP. The primary objective of the BMP is to improve competitiveness by selling more high-quality value-added products and increasing refinery efficiency in compliance with the highest international safety and environmental standards”. In parallel, we are moving ahead on the A-B pipeline between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to increase crude oil capacity as a strategic enabler for the BMP. Bapco is now in the final stages of the front end engineering design (Feed) for a 350,000 bpd capacity. By Q3, 2013 the tenders will be issued and pipeline completion is planned by early 2016.

The year 2012 was a year of major accomplishments across a raft of activities according to Almoayyed. Bapco processed 95.8 million barrels of crude, 1.8 million barrels above the annual budget target. Bapco delivered refined product while managing its operating cost at nearly the same level of 2011. The efficiencies being delivered in the refinery and across all operations are impressive.

Many other milestones were successfully achieved in environment, health and safety (EHS) sectors reflecting Bapco’s continuing commitment to encouraging a culture of vocational safety, health and social responsibility and the enhancement of community welfare in Bahrain.

In 2012, Bapco succeeded in extending its Environmental Management System certification (ISO 14001) to all parts of its operations and it has successfully undergone external audits to receive its re-certification. Bapco’s “Striving for Excellence” vision is being achieved in operational safety.

“Bapco successfully attained 8 million man hours without a lost time injury, which meant that all Bapco and contractor employees worked for over a year without a single serious incident or injury, a truly remarkable achievement, and is a testament to the culture of the organisation. The refining division, which is the largest division in Bapco and undertakes higher risk work, has now worked two years without a serious injury. Again, this does not happen by chance, but rather is a reflection of a robust personal safety work culture, procedures and systems,” continues Almoayyed.

One of the main Bapco safety awareness programmes, the Environment, Health & Safety (EHS) Week 2012, was completed underlining Bapco’s commitment towards a safe work place. Several safety system experts have obtained formal certification in safety integrity level assurance of safety instrumentation. Bapco completed three years’ work to upgrade and unify the Risk Management procedures that have been used since 2000. In 2012 Bapco was accepted as a participant member of Oil Spill Response Limited (OSRL) which qualified us to be shareholder of the company. This should help Bapco to enhance its role in the containment and prevention of oil spill in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

All of these EHS achievements demonstrate Bapco’s commitment to achieving an incident and injury free work place.

Bapco continues to transform itself into a fully integrated and modern refinery through a $1.2 billion strategic investment programme. In 2012, the Feed study for the new A-B pipeline was completed as well as the construction work on the “green” waste water treatment plant project and steam-turbo generator project.

Detailed engineering work was carried out on the ‘innovative’ pilot solar power project. Bapco awarded the EPC contract for installation of 5 MW solar pilot power generation system to Petra Solar on June 20, 2012. All work on the ‘path-setting’ CO2 recovery plant project was completed. A major facility for top loading of diesel into tankers was installed to enable better governance on diesel distribution.

Energy conservation was emphasised in Bapco’s 100-day Energy Blitz was launched and actual results exceeded expectations by achieving an unprecedented energy savings of $689,000 in 100 days versus the target of $275,000. Bapco commissioned new gas distribution point and ring main line at Hidd Industrial area and commissioned gas supply to all Bapco gas customers. The average annual gas supply for 2012 reached 1300 million standard cubic feet per day.

Bapco continued with its long term strategy plan for growth through the BMP and supporting initiatives that are critical to the enablement of the ambitious programme. As well as increased competitiveness, operational excellence includes improving systems, processes, policies, work flows, standards and procedures, gap assessments and gap closures. A total of 23 corporate initiatives were developed for implementation in the years 2013-2018.

Bapco also provides technical and engineering support for the deep gas exploration programme and an LNG terminal on behalf of the National Oil and Gas Authority (Noga) and nogaholding. The first deep gas exploratory well is expected to be spudded in the first quarter of 2014 by Oxy, and Almoayyed has high expectations for this strategic initiative.

The diversification strategy involves the widening of the product portfolio and developing joint venture partnerships. In 2012, the Lube Base Oil (LBO) joint venture with Neste Oil of Finland and nogaholding successfully completed its first year of operation. The new joint venture facility is state-of-the-art, and many successes have been achieved during the year in the production of very high grade products.

Bapco continues to invest heavily in its people with a total of 33 courses of varying technical complexity offered during 2012 from IT to the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM). Bapco issued more than 13,000 Sadeem Fuel Cards for its individuals and corporate customers.

The oil industry around the world is looking to recruit specific skills sets where there are shortages and Bapco is no exception.

“In the mid-1990s, Bapco stopped recruiting in certain areas and now we are off-balance and need to develop resources in certain areas. Our goal at Bapco is to become the employer of choice and with our proactive approach we are looking positively at bringing in the talent we need and recruiting young graduates,” concludes Almoayyed.