Online Journal for E&P Geoscientists

Khlaifat, Abdelaziz ^*1; Qutob, Hani ¹
(1) Weatherford Oil Tool, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Nowadays, the gap between academia and industry is widening in relation to cooperation and graduate output where industry's demand has become a persistent problem. Oil and gas industries are faced with many challenges in their developmental process, addressing these challenges is laid in "our ability to link the theories of academic research findings to the industrial practical situations". Academics and Industrialists are living in different worlds and pursuing different goals. The Academic is striving for creating new solutions with a high innovation rate, scientific achievements and recognition from peers with a long range perception. The Industrialist thinks in terms of short range goals, prefers proven solutions with a low risk and is mainly concerned with costs, profits and economic survival. In view of that, the growing gap between academia and industry is reflected on slight availability of high-quality college/university graduates demanded by the industry. This problem can be overcome by having industry-academia interactions which will help to impart relevant knowledge and will be sustainable in the changing conditions.

Valuable collaboration between the Oil and Gas industry and universities will be critical to the industry economic recovery and sustainable international competitiveness. Industry must also make a sustained effort in supporting higher education by providing the support needed to help students build the employability and technical skills that are so important.

This paper suggests a number of key areas to achieve successful cooperation between industry and academia: industry support to basic research for knowledge creation, industry participation in technology development involving some exploratory work, academic intervention in solving industry problems, laboratory utilization by industry, faculty members’ sabbatical leave and industry involvement in curriculum development. Some cases of cooperation between academia and industry will be discussed including the cooperation of the Well Engineering Center of Excellence at Weatherford and different academic institutions in the region.