DNO Welcomes AUK College of Business Students to the Workplace

The partnership between the American University of Kurdistan (AUK) and DNO, a Norwegian multinational oil and gas company, has never been stronger. In April, DNO put on a talk about HSE (health, safety, and environment) at AUK for the University’s Petroleum Engineering students. In May, DNO was present at the AUK Job Fair, greeting all comers and giving out care bags. In July, DNO has turned its attention to College of Business students focused on the oil and gas industry. At the beginning of the month, it offered classroom instruction on the AUK campus about many of the technical matters pertaining to oil and gas, linchpins of the global economy. On the 11^th and 12^th of July, DNO made its instruction for AUK College of Business students all the more concrete, with site visits. These students and their advisers, College of Business Acting Dean Uzair Bhatti and faculty member Sinbl Yakoob, traveled to a DNO-operated worksite close to the Turkish border, Peshkhabir.

This combination of DNO-led classroom instruction and site visits counted as an internship for the College of Business Oil and Gas Management students, and it was actually DNO’s second year offering internships to College of Business students (in 2022, it hosted two College of Business students, alongside several others from the Department of Petroleum Engineering). Shepherding the students through most of their internship activities was Salar Mohammed, Training Coordinator for DNO. He was an ever-helpful presence, answering all questions enthusiastically, early and often emphasizing DNO’s prioritization of safety. “Safety first” is not hackneyed rhetoric for DNO; it is their guiding principle, evidenced in the practically ubiquitous “How We Work Safe” and “RICH” (“report, intervene, comply, help”) signs first seen at the entrance gate. He started his speech on safety and various technical aspects of DNO’s work the College of Business students would be less familiar with (such as converting “sour gas” into “sweet gas”) on the bus ride from the entrance gate to the jobsite proper.

A general overview of the facilities conducted outside preceded the several overviews conducted in specific departments of the workplace. The facilities have an air of livability despite their clear functionality in oil and gas extraction; employees stay there overnight, so a certain livability is necessary. Salar Mohammed pointed out to students the extensive biological and chemical treatment capacity of the facilities, meant to minimize and even undo environmental damage, for the good of the region and especially the on-site residents. “Livability,” of course, connotes the continuation of life, and the DNO jobsite includes a full-fledged clinic in case of an emergency or just the common cold, and students took a quick tour of it.

Around the middle of the site visit came the part that most closely resembled classroom instruction. “Safety” was literally first in the interactive presentation. An HSE expert walked the AUK students through the ins and outs of safety on a DNO-administered site. DNO, as he explained, stresses safety so much because it must simultaneously protect people, the environment, its assets, and its reputation; the four are interlocked, as damage to one is likely to result in damage to the others. The expert distinguished between a “hazard” (something with the potential to harm people) and a “risk” (the chance of receiving harm), and he elicited numerous examples of both from the participants. Closely allied to “safety” is “security,” and the latter was the topic of the next presentation. A different expert talked about the site’s dedicated Oil Police Force, colored threat levels, and lockdown procedures. He also talked about some things participants already knew from firsthand experience, namely that site security needed to be aware of all POBs (“persons on board”) at all times and required badges or visitor passes as proof of identity. No element of this “class” was intended to scare students or discourage them from pursuing oil and gas industry employment; rather, the point was to make them feel comfortable in the moment and assured in their professional aspirations.

The students were made to feel like they were DNO employees already through a complimentary lunch in the same mess hall concurrently in use by DNO workers. After lunch, there were four more locations visited, shedding light on the tremendous variety of roles available on the site. The first stop, a lab for testing materials, must have been a thrill for the more scientifically inclined of the Oil and Gas Management students. The most important testing was the kind to differentiate between “heavy oil” and “light oil.” There were devices on hand for measuring specific gravity, pH, viscosity, and sulfur content, among other values. Next, students went to the nerve center of the whole site, explicitly named “Control Room.” Inside, there was a wall of monitors, showing camera displays from throughout the site and oil and gas production metrics. Everyone working there was a local, and some had started as trainees only to be promoted, ultimately, to the managerial ranks; this was delivered as an inspirational message to the AUK students. Next, the students gathered in what looked like a break room, catching DNO employees between shifts for further guidance. This discussion was less technical than most others of the day, being centered on DNO’s recruitment, retention, and optimization of its human resources. The students were encouraged to get relevant experience and build up transferable skills however they could. In accordance with DNO’s stringent safety requirements, the fourth and final stop was limited to those who were wearing proper PPE (personal protective equipment), as it involved closer proximity to hazards.

Thus drew to a close the first of two consecutive days of DNO site visits for College of Business Oil and Gas Management students. Sinbl Yakoob, who previously had her students visit local business facilities as part of group research projects, spoke on the intrinsic educational value of site visits for students: “They [can better] visualize how a production company or operation works. They learn about a process in a way that cannot be captured in a book.”

That experiential learning would continue the next day, at another DNO-run jobsite. The second site visit was in a separate location, but it was largely more of the same, for the best reason imaginable: DNO, being so concerned with consistent excellence everywhere in the world the company operates, imposes a substantial degree of uniformity on its sites. One highlight of what was new from the second site visit was the conversation with Pierre Yves Desquet, of France. Much of the time during their two days on DNO jobsites, the Oil and Gas Management students were doing their best to absorb scientific information not perfectly aligned with the managerial study that is their focus at AUK; Mr. Desquet, on the other hand, played to the students’ strength and made it even greater, through his own management acumen.

The epilogue to the two days of site visits took place on the AUK campus on July 13. DNO gave the Oil and Gas Management students a test to determine what they had learned on the (potential) job. After the test, the students received certificates and letters of completion, as visual proof of the experiences the students were urged to put on their resumes immediately. Salar Mohammed, understandably much differently attired than he was two days prior, personally distributed the letters and certificates. Uzair Bhatti and College of Business Administrative Assistant Nareen Ramadhan, acting on behalf of AUK, reciprocally gave certificates and gift bags to both Salar Mohammed and Siyar Ameen, the instructor for the AUK classroom portion of the internship.