Lyna Mohamad
Acting Vice-Chancellor of Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) Pengiran Dr Mohammad Iskandar bin Pengiran Haji Petra underscored that the Petroleum Energy Forum’s (PEF 2022) theme ‘Fuelling the Mind for Future Talents’ is relevant to Brunei’s energy sector to thrive in the changing energy landscape.
Speaking at the opening ceremony yesterday, Pengiran Dr Mohammad Iskandar as the guest of honour noted that the forum is hoped to serve as a significant avenue for collaboration, developing network, and students and staff knowledge exchange between UBD, Brunei Shell Petroleum Company Sdn Bhd (BSP) and other institutions.
He also noted that it is hoped the success of the forum will create innovativeness among the future generation in tackling the ever-changing issues that energy sector face.
“We understand that UBD and BSP have been collaborating for some time. Since 1993, BSP has supported in developing UBD’s Master of Science, Petroleum Geoscience programme, and in 2011, UBD introduced a fully-fledged undergraduate programme in Geology which BSP also has supported.”
As part of the programme, BSP further extended its support in coaching and mentoring students through providing Discovery Year placement and final year internships and with this, the students were able to obtain hands-on training and exposure to real data-driven technical projects, corporate culture, work ethics as well as developing their soft skills.
“We are happy to know that last year our Geology programme received the ASEAN University Network Quality Assurance (AUN-QA) assessment for quality teaching and research.
“This achievement would not be possible without the hard work of UBD’s staff and BSP’s support. For that, we thank everyone for achieving this milestone,” he said.
PEF 2022 is organised to complement and enhance what students have learnt in class with real-life applied knowledge.
The forum’s main purpose since its first inception in 2018 is to showcase to students technical studies and advanced technologies used in the petroleum engineering and geosciences discipline in BSP that contributes directly to the safe exploration and production of hydrocarbon in Brunei Darussalam.
With the energy sector constantly evolving, it requires our people or Orang Kitani to be agile and adaptable and thus it is very important to have beneficial collaborations between the education institutions and private companies to be at pace with the changing technologies, ideologies and innovation of today’s world.
“Close collaboration between BSP and universities and polytechnics creates opportunities for students to network for the future, making them future-proof as we are able to identify which gaps will need to be closed,” said BSP Chief Petroleum Engineer Gert-Jan Mohammed Ziad Reijnders.
This year’s conference-style forum featured three keynote speeches, six plenary presentations, two interactive workshops and 15 interactive exhibitions, including equipment demonstrations with topics covered during the forum including outcrop studies, improved oil recovery, artificial lift, geochemistry, abandonment, digitalisation, data management, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), as well as research trends.