Saudi Aramco announced the opening of the new Aramco Research Center on Houston’s west side in the energy corridor, on Friday, 19 September.
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Khalid A. Al-Falih, president & CEO Saudi Aramco, at Aramco Research Center opening Image: Saudi Aramco |
At the inauguration of the center, Khalid A. Al-Falih, president and CEO of Saudi Aramco, discussed why the location was important to the company.
“When it comes to energy, Houston is the place to be and we are proud to be a part of it,” Al-Falih said.
He continued, highlighting the large role the city has played in the oil and gas industry.
“Houston was the engine with its unique mix of inventiveness, entrepreneurship, grit, and can-do attitude. And whether it was the original oil boom or the successive offshore step outs that have kept Houston in the forefront of our industry, technology has always been the key.”
The Houston research center aims to address the entire range of upstream opportunities and challenges, including production and drilling technologies, reservoir engineering, geology, geophysics technologies, and advances related to subsurface sensing and control.
Houston is one of many R&D centers Saudi Aramco has opened recently. In December 2013, the company launched a new facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And Al-Falih pledged at the ceremony to devote more resources to R&D. Another, planned for Detroit, will focus on engine-fuel systems and development.
“Because of our belief that innovation and cutting-edge technology are the key strategic enablers to addressing the industry’s challenges and to meeting future energy demand, we are tripling our R&D manpower and increasing our global R&D funding five-fold,” Al-Falih says.
Saudi Aramco’s US partners include universities such as: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, the California Institute of Technology, Cornell University, Rice University, the University of Houston, the University of Texas at Austin, and Texas A&M University.
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