The long road to the rig

New entrants to Aramco’s upstream arm are trained to be multi-skilled

Up to 250 young Saudis each year will have the experience of planning the development of an oil well and operating a jack-up rig before they have even reached a well head in the desert or offshore Saudi Arabia. Such is the advanced equipment available in the company's Upstream Professional Development Center (UPDC) in the Dhahran administration complex. Sitting in a large chair, with control leavers on the arms, young Saudis can learn to operate a cyber rig, coping with challenges created by instructors. "In any sort of drilling operation, before you head out to the rig site to drill a well, we train you and you have to get a certification," says Has Malik, one of the instructors. "When we a