The Drillbotics® team consists of so many volunteers. From time to time we want to recognize some of our contributors who give us just a little extra. Mohamed Ali Hassan learned of the student program last year and led the local effort to recruit two universities from Algeria to join the 2018-2019 competition. Teams from Ecole Nationale Polytechnique (ENP) and Université Kasdi Merbah Ouargla (UKMO) participated in the European contest in Celle, Germany last June.
Mohamed has been actively participating and volunteering with SPE for many years. He served as a Board member in different SPE Sections (Egypt, Northern Emirates, and Italy). He is also the Founder and Membership Chairperson of the Hassi Messaoud SPE section in Algeria. Recently, he received the SPE Middle East Regional Service Award for year 2018.
Mohamed is a Senior Drilling Consultant & Instructor with 15 years professional experience in Drilling Engineering and Project Management. He graduated from Cairo University with a Petroleum Engineering B.Sc. in 2004. He has work experience with major international companies like Eni, Sonatrach, Dragon Oil, and Halliburton. Mohamed participated in several challenging drilling projects in different areas (Deepwater Mediterranean, Onshore HPHT Algeria, Caspian Sea, Norwegian Sea, GOM, etc.). Currently, he is working at SONATRACH Drilling HQ office in Algiers.
When asked about his thoughts regarding Drillbotics, Mohamed offered, “I believe Drillbotics is a window for engineering students to experience the future of the oil & gas industry (automation, cybernetics and digital transformation). Being an SPE member and drilling professional working in Algeria for many years, I felt some kind of personal obligation to get Algerian students engaged in this inspiring competition. I know Algerian students have a big potential to learn and innovate, and I thought that they deserve to participate on an international level like other students from Europe and North America, and hopefully they will inspire more teams from Africa and Arab countries to participate in following years.”
Last year, he started to recruit two student teams, one from north Algeria in the capital city Algiers (ENP Team) and one from the Sahara desert in the south (Ouargla UKMO Team). Then, he managed to get ENTP (major drilling contractor in Algeria) as the main sponsor for the UKMO Team, and SONATRACH (major national oil company) as sponsor for the ENP Team.
“It was a challenging journey for our student teams to make it to final test day, but I am sure they have learned a lot from it. I really enjoyed working with students this year and will continue this effort next year.” Thank you, Mohamed for all your hard work.
