Abla Al Riyami was appointed to head the new In-Country Value (ICV) Directorate in Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) in the summer of 2014. She and her team are playing a key role in creating job and training opportunities for Omanis in the oil and gas sector, supporting the development and growth of local businesses and ensuring more of the industry’s wealth is retained in the Sultanate. Here, she gives a review of the directorate’s role and performance after its first year.

How has the first year of the new ICV directorate been in terms of successes and challenges?

Becoming the first In-Country Value Director was a totally different challenge to my previous positions, especially my last one as Gas Director. The first thing was to integrate the team seamlessly: ICV, which was new, and the Super Local Community Contractor/Local Community Contractor aspect. As part of our team building and focus, we spent time off site to develop the 2015 ICV Business Plan which provided the focus we needed to drive ICV this year. In parallel, we reviewed what was or not available in terms of ICV procedures and guidelines: these foundations are needed to ensure alignment and compliance in the organisation to what we wish to achieve.

What have your main priorities been?

Building team spirit and trust in each other was my first priority. Secondly, we had to prioritise what we were
going to focus on, having considered the entire multitude of ICV opportunities, requirements and challenges. Thirdly, there was a need to get smarter at how we organised ourselves in the various ICV sections and to proactively look at the work ahead of us with the limited resourcing available. In order to do this, we took the output from the Petroleum Economic Evaluation Programme 2015 and assessed all the expected ICV interactions with the business in terms of ICV strategy development and ICV tender evaluation, to name but two. That identified the workload ahead of us and assessed how many additional resources we would need if we were to address everything. It was quite apparent that we needed additional resources.

I also focused on getting closer to key directorates on helping them identify and agree their ICV strategy and plan and to measure their performance against plan. To date, I have been having regular 1-2-2 monthly meetings with the Well Engineering Director, initially Khamis Al Saadi, and then Mohammed Al Rashdi when he took over, and Husam Al Jahdhami, Contracting and Procurement Manager.  Most recently, we have started monthly one-to-ones with Engineering and Operations Director Abdullah Al Shuely and External Affairs Director Abdul-Amir Al Ajmi. Next year will see us work more closely in the same way with other directorates.

Another focused area was on stakeholder engagements. This entailed engaging not only government bodies such as the Ministry of Oil and Gas, Ministry of Commerce and Supreme Council of Planning, but also visiting a number of contractors both in the concession area and other industrial areas.

What are your personal targets in your new position?

There are many but here are the main ones:

•  To deliver the opportunities that the ICV blueprint (developed for Oman’s oil and gas industry) has identified to ensure we maximise the value retained within Oman

•  To work with key relevant stakeholders to ensure that our companies are sustainable and competitive now and in the future

•  And to encourage companies to propose truly innovative solutions for the Oman oil and gas sector and support these companies to ensure they commercialise any such opportunities and become part of Oman’s sustainable industry base.

We need to ensure that all our ICV activities are executed with total transparency and 100% integrity and that we build an ICV capability in PDO so that we can be recognised as a true centre of excellence for our industry and beyond.

In addition, we are seriously addressing how we can best support the introduction of new SMEs and help existing ones to ensure they are given the best opportunity to become commercial successes both locally and internationally.

Last but not least, we will work very closely with our colleagues in our National Objectives team to ensure that we maximise all training and employment opportunities for Omanis.

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