Abstract

In the first part of this seminar, we will go on a historical journey through early days of oil exploration in Saudi Arabia and Oman, and how it was shaped by vision, perseverance and technical development.  We will examine the characters and technologies that fundamentally changed the history of Arabia and the world.  In the second part, we will venture to the US of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s to relive how extraordinary engineering vision and perseverance revitalized a declining industry and caused a fundamental shift in the energy landscape of the world.  We return home to see how these changes are nowadays impacting the energy landscape in Arabia.  Finally, we investigate what all of this might imply for maturing geothermal energy use in Arabia.  Are their geothermal resources? What is the resource? How can it be recovered? What is realistic? What needs to happen to mature geothermal in Saudi Arabia? And what might be the appropriate next steps?  We aim to provide a sense of history, and tickle the ingenuity of the audience with the goal to contribute towards realizing Saudi’s Vision 2030.

Biography

Volker Vahrenkamp is Professor of Earth Systems Sciences & Engineering at KAUST.  He loves rocks AND the holes in the rocks through which fluids are flowing.  He and his students try to find out how limestones and the holes in them are created.  For that they search in the sea and visit many mountain areas.  Through his research he wants to help secure future energy supply because much of oil, gas, and hot water needed for geothermal energy are found in the pores of limestones.  Before coming to KAUST, he spent 28 years searching for hydrocarbons in wild places – from off-shore atolls to the jungles of Borneo and the deserts of Arabia.  In 2016, he co-founded Nordic Geothermal LLC, a Dubai based company promoting the use of geothermal energy in Arabia. Volker earned his PhD in Marine Geology at the University of Miami in Florida.