Home in the desert

I get a lot of questions about what it is like where I work so here is a little story to give you an idea of where I am in the world, you can have a look at the map below. I am in Mukhaizna, Oman and as far as you can see in any direction, there are oil wells. It’s a huge field and the oil is very heavy and locked in the sand, so to get it out, they draw water from an aquifer, turn it into steam, re-inject it into the ground where the oil is stuck and then pump the oil to the surface. There are literally hundreds of steam injection wells, even more oil wells and quite a few waste water injection wells as well (a lot of water comes out with the oil and it is all removed and pumped back into the reservoir). Occidental Petroleum started developing the field in 2005 and it is targeted to produce 150 thousand barrels of oil a day by the end of 2012. For spending all the money and providing all the expertise, they have been granted a large cut of the profits (producing the oil only costs about $12/barrel) for 35 years. They also have to train the Omani people on how to operate the facility on their own, with a goal for them to be on their own by roughly 2020. That is the reason the company I work for (PetroSkills Competency Solutions) is providing people like me to develop all the policies and procedures for governance and knwledge assessmets as resources for a task based system for training. We now have a team of five; operators, engineers and a chemist/quality person (me). The team is led by my girlfriend Ronaye, who some of you will get to meet when we converge on Chianti Castle to celebrate my coming of age.


Everyone here is very friendly. Many of the expats work here and live somewhere else and most of them do not live in their country of origin. Many live in the Philippines,Spain and Thailand, mostly cause it is very cheap to live and also it gives them tax incentives to reside out of their own country. The Omani’s are very friendly and welcoming and if you take the effort to learn simple things like greeting them in their own language, it doesn’t take long to make friends.

So far, my closest contact with an Omani has been Yasser, who is working in our team developing standard operating procedures. The Omanis are very religious and obviously Islamic (Muslim). I have learned that there are basically three types of Muslims, Sunni, Shi’a and Sufi. The majority of the Omanis are Sufi and the majority of them try to live their life according to five basic rules:

1. "There is no God but Allah" (They don’t believe that Jesus was a god, or a devine being but a prophet. There were many prophets, starting with Adam and ending with Mohammed and all of them were nothing more than god’s messengers.)

2. They all pray five times per day (they must face toward Mecca, the birthplace of Mohammed when doing so).

3. Everyone who has more than 100 rials (about 400 Australian or NZ Dollars) of disposable income at the end of a year must make a payment of alms (2.5% of a person's yearly savings) to someone poor.

4. They all must observe the practice of fasting (during the month of Ramadan [9th month of the lunar year] from dawn to sunset. All fit adult Moslems refrain from food, drinks and sexual activity, including water – even if they are in the middle of the desert. This goes on for the entire month and then they party -BIG TIME. (The greatest Moslem holiday is the Festival after the end of Ramadan and is called Eid).

5. At some point in their life, they all must make a pilgrimage to Mecca (this must be done during a special time of the year and is called the hajj).

There are over 200 million Arabic speakers in the world and the Islamic also known as Muslim religion is the largest and fastest growing one in the world. It seems to me that the philosophy of Islam is pretty much the same as Christianity, both are about one God that is supreme and being good to your fellow man and bettering the lot of human kind. Funny really when it seems so much war has been fought over religion - but this what you will hear people say and in my opinion they were/are never fought over the religion itself really it was only over territory mainly for resoures or the land itself and the religion simply defined a people that banded together.

Enough of the philosophical stuff, here you can see a map of where I am. We are right in the middle of the Omani desert and it is dry and hot and sandy as far as the eye can see.

We live in a camp here. Not in tents, but in cabins that are essentially portacoms, like the type you see on temporary construction sites. There is a mess where there is three meals a day all laid on, you just need to turn up and the food is pretty good. Laundry is also done every day I just put my bag out in the morning and it is in my room by the time I get back from work. We work 12 hours days here, so not much of the day left to do much else except read, watch a movie and go to sleep.

The most important thing I have learned here is that the toilet lid must be left down and bathroom door closed as the snakes and spiders like to come up through the sewers.

Ma’a salama (goodbye in Arabic)

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