Market Insights 01 2017

UK ₤4 | Europe ₏5.35 | USA $6

Volume 01 | Issue 01 | 2017

Next Issue on Renewable Energy

Knowledge

>>

Analysis

>>

Opinion

Cover Story P 16

OPEC and the world oil story

P8

IN Focus with international arbitrator Sarosh Zaiwalla P 20

Mapping the growth of women in the oil & gas sector

P 38

An exclusive interview with former OPEC advisor Javad Yarjani on the market outlook for 2017 and the impact of OPEC on global oil markets

A review of IFM Awards Singapore 2016

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THIS ISSUE

EDITOR’S NOTE

3

UK ₤4 | Europe €5.35 | USA $6

Volume 01 | Issue 01 | 2017

Next Issue on Renewable Energy

It gives me great joy to present the inaugural issue of Market Insights – the latest business quarterly by International Finance Publications Ltd. Following OPEC’s high-profile meetings in Austria where members decided to make production cuts, there was hope that oil prices would stabilize this year. In this issue’s cover story, we give you the low-down on the workings of OPEC and their forecast for this year’s oil industry. We also explore the role of women in the oil & gas industry and steps that could be taken to enhancing their inclusion, as well as a sneak peek into the future of visual data analytics in the oil & gas industry. As official media partners for

SOGAT 2017, we’re giving you a glimpse of what to expect in the field of sour gas development, especially in the UAE this year. Finally, we also have a feature on Africa’s abundant natural gas resources, which explores if the country is really set to be a game changer in this field.

With this magazine, we’re entering new territories content-wise. In every issue, there will be heightened emphasis on decoding industrial and corporate trainings – the new age tool to educate and empower the modern day workforce. The need for skilled employees is at an all-time high, and with every industry changing so rapidly, it is imperative that the workforce today is abreast

CONTENTS

of the latest developments.

This can be made possible by making them a part of relevant training programmes.

Knowledge

>>

Analysis

>>

Opinion

Cover Story P 16

P8

OPEC

and the world oil story

We hope you enjoy reading this issue of Market Insights!

IN Focus with international arbitrator Sarosh Zaiwalla P 20

Mapping the growth of women in the oil & gas sector

P 38

An exclusive interview with former OPEC advisor Javad Yarjani on the market outlook for 2017 and the impact of OPEC on global oil markets

A review of IFM Awards Singapore 2016

– Sindhuja Balaji | Editor

Market Insights

P 12

NEWS 04

Saudi Arabian oil minister confident of market stability

05

Cloud computing the future of Oil & Gas

05

Conoco Philips makes major discovery in Alaska

FEATURES 12

Visual analytics in Oil & Gas

20

Pink power in Oil & Gas

23

The league of natural gas producers

P 23

TRAININGS 26

Skill development in a progressive economy

30

How to manage third party risks in organizations

32

Developing business agility & the role of HR

P 32

EVENTS 24

Show Preview - SOGAT 2017

38

Show Review - IFM Awards Singapore 2016

42

Special Coverage - Interview with CEO of Azizi Bank

44

Show Review - Focus Iran Summit

Training Head: Samir Ahmed Accounts: Angela Mathews Media Enquiries: enquiry@ifinancemag.com Knowledge

>>

Analysis

>>

Opinion

Publisher: Sunil Bhat Managing Editor: Sindhuja Balaji

Registered Office INTERNATIONAL FINANCE PUBLICATIONS LIMITED

Editorial & Design Team: Arthur Warren, Ashton Felix, Prasad Shankarappa

Business Analysts: Adam Lobo, James Barrett

843 Finchley Road, London, NW11 8NA

Head of Advertising Sales : Ashish Shenoy

Tel: +44 (0) 208 123 9436 | Fax: +44 (0) 208 181 6550

Business Development : Steve Martin

Email: info@ifinancemag.com www.imarketinsights.com | Issue 01 | 2017

Market Insights

4

News

Jobs in oil surge after twoyear low

After a three-year slump and half a million job cuts later, the USA’s oil industry is poised to increase its employment numbers.

According to a report in industry consultant Graves & Co founder, a third of the global job cuts were from the USA alone. More than three quarters of jobs eliminated around the world until the end of 2016 came from oilfield service providers, drilling contractors and equipment makers. However, workers are being hired back following the resurgence of projects, mainly due to the increase of oil prices to above US$50 a barrel.

In a note to investors, as mentioned in Bloomberg, Barclays analyst David Anderson predicted that capital expenditures would go up by 7% this year. In their Oil & Gas Industry Outlook 2017, consulting giant Deloitte has indicated a steady but slow recovery in the energy sector.

A report in Fortune has highlighted findings in outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, there were Schlumberger, Baker Hughes, Weatherford International and Halliburton featured in the list of biggest layoffs in 2015.

Schlumberger let go of 20,000 workers, Baker Hughes laid off 7,000, Halliburton 6,400 and Weatherford International 4,000.

Market Insights

Saudi Arabia confident of market stability following production cuts

OPEC-initiated production cuts have largely helped stabilize the oil prices, with cuts likely to discontinue after June, according to Saudi Arabian oil minister Khalid Al-Falih. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Al-Falih thought the market is “bullish” as it is re-balancing itself and demands appear quite robust too. According to Al-Falih, the global oil market is moving in the right direction.

Back in December 2016, OPEC members decided to initiate production cuts in a bid to stabilize oil prices. The members agreed that they would reduce production by nearly 1.8mn bpd for an initial period of six months, and bring back supplies in line with consumption.

Saudi Arabia, a major OPEC influencer, led the way with its plan to curtail production, confounding its critics with this decision made for the first time in eight years.

Other countries such as Russia, UAE, Kuwait and Venezuela made production cuts as well. While Iran was exempted from making production cuts, Iraq, which had agreed on production cuts, could face a tougher time implementing the same.

Issue 01 | 2017 | www.imarketinsights.com

Tullow Oil discovers oil offshore Kenya

Oil explorer Tullow Oil has announced that the Erut-1 well in Block 13T, Northern Kenya, has discovered a gross oil interval of 55 metres with 25 metres of net oil pay at a depth of 700 metres. The overall oil column for the field is considered to be 100 to 125 metres.

The objective of the well was to test a structural trap at the northern limit of the South Lokichar basin.

The Erut-1 well was drilled ten kilometres north of the Etom-2 well.

Fluid samples taken and wire-line logging all indicate the presence of recoverable oil. Erut-1 successfully shows that oil has migrated to the northern limit of the South Lokichar basin and has de-risked multiple prospects in this area, which will now be considered in the partnership’s future exploration and appraisal drilling programme.

Tullow operates Blocks 13T and 10BB with 50% equity and is partnered by Africa Oil Corp and Maersk Oil – both with 25%. Angus McCoss, exploration director, said, “This is an exciting discovery from a bold exploration well that proves that oil has migrated to the northern limit of the South Lokichar basin. This extends the known hydrocarbon limits of the basin beyond the successful Etom discovery into the underexplored northern part of the basin where we have several undrilled prospects. Further exploration drilling is now being planned.”

News

Conoco Phillips makes a major discovery in Alaska

The Alaskan unit of oil explorer ConocoPhillips announced a major discovery in Alaska. The Willow discovery lies in the company’s Greater Mooses Tooth (“GMT”) unit and consists of two wells which encountered 72 feet and 42 feet of net pay.

3D seismic appraisal work will start this month, however initial estimates indicate the discovery could contain a recoverable oil potential of 300 mn barrels of oil. As a result, Willow could produce up to 100,000 bpd of oil and first oil could come by 2023.

ConocoPhillips has a 78% working interest in the play while Anadarko Petroleum holds a 22% interest.

The two GMT wells are 28 miles west of the Alpine Central facility and four miles apart. In addition to permit approvals, there is appraisal and seismic work to be done, as well as a development plan for the reservoir.

Considering Alaska’s harsh climate, producing 100,000 boe/d is a challenge, admitted Conoco Philips officials. There is not even a year-round road from the Alpine centre to other infrastructure in the region. So Conoco Philips is expected to build an ice road in the winter and truck in all the supplies they would need for the rest of the operating year while the road is still frozen and navigable.

Cloud computing the future of oil & gas

A forecast by UK’s Oil & Gas Council has predicted the role of cloud computing in oil & gas. Specifically, the report has elucidated the potential of hybrid cloud, suited for the oil & gas industry, given the highly complex nature of data. Usually, oil & gas companies have additional requirements for powerful processing of large data files and high utilization of human resources. In order to maintain large amounts of data through cloud, there is a need to develop highly specialized data storage systems, which are still in the development phase.

The report goes on to explain that the logical solution is to maintain high power workstations under the operational control of specialists, while integrating workstation software with the cloud for all other functions. This is the hybrid system that addresses major challenges faced in the oil & gas industry.

Through a hybrid setup, oil & gas companies can improvise their IT infrastructure, ensure a centralized support system, link multiple offices and remote sites with maximum inflow of data and set up shared virtual working spaces.

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Iran’s oil & gas exports to reach US$41bn by end of March

Petroleum Minister Bijan Zangeneh, said last week that Iran’s exports of oil and gas condensates will reach US$41bn by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (started on March 21). However, this does not mean that Iran will receive US$41bn by the end of the year because Iran receives its money with a delay of few months, the minister said.

“We received US$24.7bn over the past nine months of the year and we will earn significant amount of money in the remaining months of the year, which will definitely help the government meet the target budget,” Zangeneh said.

When asked whether Iranian oil revenues are blocked in certain countries, he denied confirmation.

Over the sanctions time, Iran exported around one million barrels per day crude oil, while it had no direct access to the financial resources coming from its exports, Zangeneh said.

A large part of Iran’s oil revenues were frozen during the sanctions time and in some cases Iran had to import commodities instead of getting the money, the minister added.

With removal of sanctions following Iran nuclear deal last year, Iran was allowed to increase its oil exports up to the pre-sanction level and the financial resources were also unfrozen, Zangeneh said.

www.imarketinsights.com | Issue 01 | 2017

Market Insights

6

Events Calendar

Events /2017 Date

Event Name

Location

Website

2–3 February, 2017

6th HR Minds Summit

Austria Trend Hotel Savoyen Vienna, Austria

http://glceurope.com/

23 – 24 February, 2017

3rd Annual Post Trade Forum

Austria Trend Hotel Savoyen Vienna, Austria

http://glceurope.com/

14 – 16 March, 2017

Oil & Gas Asia

Karachi Expo Centre Karachi, Pakistan

http://www.ogpoasia.com/

26 – 28 March, 2017

Oil & Gas West Asia

Oman Convention & Exhibition Centre Muscat, Oman

http://www.ogwaexpo.com/

26 – 30 March, 2017

SOGAT

Beach Rotana Hotel Abu Dhabi, UAE

http://sogat.org/

27 – 29 March, 2017

East Africa Oil & Gas Week

The Safari Park Hotel & Casino Nairobi, Kenya

http://www.eastafricaogs.com/

11 – 13 April, 2017

Global Oil & Gas Atyrau Expo

Atyrau Sports Complex Atyrau, Kazakhstan

http://oil-gas.kz/en/

31 May – 3 June 2017

Caspian International Oil & Gas Exhibition

Baku Expo Centre Baku, Azerbaijan

http://www.caspianoilgas.az/en-main/

Market Insights

Issue 01 | 2017 | www.imarketinsights.com

8

IN Focus

International Arbitration

IN Focus with

Sarosh Zaiwalla The Industry Jurist Extensive industrial growth has led to the need for sound international arbitration to settle industrial disputes in an amicable manner, believe legal experts. In this interview with Market Insights, renowned international arbitrator Sarosh Zaiwalla discusses how arbitration is a game-changer today, especially in emerging economies, and highlights key challenges commonly faced by lawyers specializing in arbitration.

Why is International Arbitration so important in emerging markets today?

Emerging markets require foreign direct investment (FDI) from international businesses in order for their economies to grow and generate employment. For this purpose, foreign investors have to invest millions of dollars in a country whose laws are not the same as their own and the courts are not as sophisticated and independent as seen in developed nations. The most important requirement for the foreign investor is security of his capital, in case things go wrong for no fault of his own. Almost invariably the foreign party has to have some sort of a joint venture partnership with a local business and/or the government in question. International arbitration gives the foreign investor the required security Market Insights

for his capital in case a dispute arises concerning the investment.

International arbitration provides for disputes to be settled in a neutral country as a seat of the arbitration and gives the party the ability to choose which law to apply to the contract in case of disputes. The law to be applied usually would not be law of either the investor or the developing country. International arbitration, therefore, plays a significant part to secure the investor who will not have to litigate in the court of the country of investment.

What are the most common misconceptions one has about international arbitration and how are they mitigated?

There are really no serious misconceptions about international arbitrations except

Issue 01 | 2017 | www.imarketinsights.com

that they can turn out to be more expensive than litigating in local courts. This is because arbitrators who are usually eminent individuals charge large fees, and travel costs are incurred for them and the parties. These costs can be mitigated by the Tribunal ensuring speed and efficiency and making it clear to the parties when some of these costs, like the costs of experts, are not necessary.

Historically, what are the arbitration centres that have set benchmarks in this field and why?

Historically, London has been the leading arbitration centre in the world. In fact, the commercial arbitration we see today originated in London more than 300 years ago. London had Baltic Exchange for shipping and other international commodities exchange. Whenever a dispute arose, parties, through their

IN Focus

International Arbitration

brokers, would go to a senior respected member of the Exchange who would make his decision on resolving disputes.

Over the years, many wellrespected international centres including Paris, Geneva and New York have developed. In recent years, Singapore and Dubai have made a positive impact in becoming international arbitration centres. Many other cities in the world have also attempted to do so, such as Hong Kong and Cairo, but they have a long way to go.

At a recent event, Sir Vivian Ramsey felt that arbitration is facing challenges such as high costs, lack of speed as well as the court’s inhibition to adopt certain practices. What is your take on this?

Yes, Sir Vivian Ramsey is right. Historically, commercial arbitration was a route adopted by businessmen, usually traders, to resolve their disputes by an expert in the field of business relating to a dispute. These disputes would be resolved speedily by arbitrators. Thirtyfive years ago, when I started my practice in the field of maritime arbitration, arbitrators were almost always from the shipping world and they held hearings in the evening. These hearings were conducted in a very cordial atmosphere. However, arbitrators today largely follow court procedures making international arbitrations lengthy and very costly. I was recently appointed as the Sole Arbitrator by two English solicitor firms to resolve a dispute concerning a joint venture in China on behalf of parties, who were from Portugal and Ireland. They had four experts tender evidence before me at the hearing, including on how loss has to be calculated – a

waste of time and money. The practice of bringing experts, even when not strictly required, more often than not increases the cost of arbitration. In fact, arbitrators appointed by the parties are supposed to be the experts.

The other disadvantage faced occasionally is the delay because a certain set of arbitrators are always appointed for cases and they end up taking on more than they can handle. In one arbitration, where my firm was acting for CNPC of China after the conclusion of a two-week hearing, the arbitrators did not publish an award for nine months and my Chinese clients were so fed up with the delay that they not only settled without waiting for an award but said they will not agree to an arbitration again.

The Arbitration Tribunal is the master of its own procedure and it is open for the Tribunal to adopt a swift procedural timetable as opposed to strictly a court timetable.

You have handled many high profile clients – what are the key takeaways in some of your landmark cases?

One of our landmark Arbitration cases was that of Hashwani v/s Jivraj, which was a dispute between two businessmen from the Ismaili community of the Islamic religion. Their contract provided that the arbitrator shall be high office holders of the Ismaili community. My firm’s client appointed a retired English High Court Judge because he did not consider a suitable Ismaili holder of high office available for appointment. The other side challenged the High Court Judge’s appointment. The English High Court, in the first instance, ruled that parties are bound by what they agreed in the arbitration agreement. The English Court

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of Appeal said that the term requiring the arbitrator to be a member of a particular religious community was unlawful as it was in breach of EU law, which prohibited discrimination on grounds of religion. The Supreme Court upheld the High Court judgment.

One of the takeaways from my own experience, which I find necessary, is the selection of the arbitrator. The duty of a party appointed arbitrator is to be neutral but he still has a duty to ensure that his client’s points are properly considered by all the three members of the Tribunal after the hearing. Very often, I find that an arbitrator appointed by a party from an emerging country is a respected eminent jurist but he is unable to communicate as equal with his co-arbitrators.

How do you compare challenging cases from, say around two decades ago to now, and how is your firm equipped to deal with unique cases in the future?

My firm is internationally known for handling unique and challenging cases. For example, Iran’s largest private bank, for which we succeeded in the UK Supreme Court challenging its listing under the nuclear sanctions, came to my firm after they had lost both in the High Court and Commercial Court. The Russian Federation contacted my firm when they were advised by other international law firms that they had no remedy to challenge The Hague Arbitration Tribunal’s award against them for US$50bn.

They asked me to choose a reliable lawyer in Holland to challenge the award and I selected one for them and ultimately with the ground of challenge to the award which I advised the Dutch lawyer, the Dutch Court set aside the award.

www.imarketinsights.com | Issue 01 | 2017

Market Insights

10 IN Focus

International Arbitration

Zaiwalla & Co. has a diverse legal staff – how helpful is this when it comes to dealing with clients in developing nations and why?

Zaiwalla & Co has staff from nine different countries, including, Canada, South Africa, India, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Georgia and England. Different countries have different commercial cultures especially in developing countries.

It is very important that the lawyer understands the commercial culture in order to obtain justice for the client. Even words in English can be misunderstood sometimes.

Recently, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he wants to make India an arbitration hub, and focus on removing archaic laws.

How versatile is arbitration to adapt with the times?

I attended the recent event held in New Delhi by the Government of India to set up India as a centre of international arbitration. Mr

Modi also participated in this event, which was inaugurated by the President of India Pranab Mukherjee. There is no reason why one of the Indian cities cannot be a hub for international arbitrations.

For this purpose, India will need to develop confidence of the international business community on the integrity of the arbitrators and the support of local courts for arbitration held in India. India still has some way to go for this purpose but a start has now been made.

More so, how can arbitration help countries like India, which do not rank favourably with foreigners for doing business, improve their image?

One of the reasons why India does not rank favorably outside for business is the delay to obtain justice in case things go wrong.

This can be overcome if India sets up in every state a Special Commercial Court to which any arbitration application goes and where the course of action is

decided promptly. This is possible and I believe that the Indian Government has made a start in this direction. 

About Mr Sarosh Zaiwalla: Mr. Zaiwalla has been involved in international arbitration right from the start of his practice 35 years ago. Over this period, he has handled more than 1,200 international arbitrations either as a counsel, solicitor, partyappointed tribunal, sole arbitrator or chairman. These cases included maritime and other commercial arbitrations relating to construction of power plants, ship building and joint venture partnership disputes.

He has extensive experience in arbitrations involving laws of countries in Europe, South Asia, Middle East and Africa. He was a member of the International Court of Arbitration of the ICC Paris for 12 years. For some years now, he has been a practicing international arbitrator and a CEDR Mediator.

Lack of industry experience stifling use of arbitration for tech disputes A study by Pinsent Masons and academics has revealed that lack of industry expertise is “stifling the use of international arbitration” for resolving technology-related disputes. Despite being recognized as well suited for TMT disputes by 92% of disputes lawyers, an analysis of the usage of dispute resolution mechanisms over the last five years found international arbitration continues to trail behind litigation as a resolution method, being used for just 35% of disputes.

Pinsent Masons dispute resolution partner David McIlwaine said, “The stark contradiction between arbitration as a preference but the use of litigation when it comes to the crunch, unearths some fundamental challenges facing the use of international arbitration to resolve TMT disputes. There may be a variety of reasons for this difference between preference and practice, including the fact that the parties did not agree to include an international arbitration provision within the governing contract, and the fact that litigation will be the default option for many disputes.”

However, alongside this there appears to be a lack of confidence in the process, he added. There is particular concern regarding the ability to identify arbitrators with TMT experience. No published list of TMT experienced arbitrators exist, and generally arbitration awards are not Market Insights

Issue 01 | 2017 | www.imarketinsights.com

published, which limits the amount of due diligence that a party is able to perform.

“As such, parties are forced to make critical decisions about the appointment of potential arbitrators based on unverifiable, anecdotal and subjective views. Despite this, there is an increase in the use of international arbitration in the technology sector.”

The research, which examined the views of more than 340 legal specialists, found that 40% of respondents would feel more comfortable adopting international arbitration for TMT disputes if arbitrators had more specialist industry expertise, even if it meant having nonlegally qualified arbitrators on the tribunal.

Professor Loukas Mistelis, director of the School of International Arbitration at Queen Mary University of London, acknowledged the complexity of the sector.

“The technology, media and telecoms sectors are highly technical and nuanced industries and there is an expectation that any arbitrator appointed would have an appropriate depth of knowledge of the industry. The numbers of highly specialised arbitrators is growing, but there is a long way to go before the industry will feel assured. The perception is that there may be a good number of specialist IP arbitrators but not as many technology experts available to act as arbitrator.”

12 Feature | Oil & Gas

Visual Data Analytics

The era of analytics in

oil & gas

TIBCO’s chief analytics officer Michael O’Connell decodes visual analytics for the oil & gas industry

Market Insights

Issue 01 | 2017 | www.imarketinsights.com

Oil & Gas | Feature

Visual Data Analytics

than before, and has revolutionised the way the industry views project completion and execution.

Specifically, visual analytics has gained prominence in the industry.

In an exclusive interview, Michael O’Connell, chief analytics officer of TIBCO, explains why visual analytics is so important for the oil & gas industry today and could be a game changer in the near future

Breaking down the analytical code

T

he impact of the oil price crash of 2014 continues to make its presence felt across the industry even now. The immediate effects were felt largely by the upstream sector, as several exploration & production projects were stalled indefinitely. Companies brainstormed on the most effective strategies for cost and personnel management as budget restraints began looming larger.

The price slide of 2014 allowed analytics to assume a larger role

Visual analytics are strong across exploration and production - for analyzing subsurface, geology, seismic, drilling and completions data. This is pivotal to optimal oil and gas exploration and production. Visual analytics are central to production surveillance – enabling process control, ongoing quality improvement and optimization.

Visual geo-analytics is pivotal to oil and gas exploration and production strategy, tactics and operations. Geospatial understanding of production in terms of geology, completions and operations factors is central to running an oil & gas business.

Some key usage scenarios include operations metrics, drilling analysis and benchmarking, equipment surveillance, asset management and ongoing visibility, competitor analysis, production root cause analysis, drilling operations and health safety and environment applications e.g. incident tracking and prevention. Visual analytics provides visibility, transparency and understanding of data and operations in all of these areas and applications.

The need for visual analytics Oil & Gas has always been a data intensive industry, with lots of data coming from drilling equipment, production equipment and intra-

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day operations. With the low cost of sensors, industrial equipment is becoming more and more instrumented, and we’re getting more and more data from that equipment.

Visual Analytics enables accessing, combining and visually exploring data to understand what’s available to inform the business challenge. Spot the fire in the data. It is the first step in the journey to get some insight and take actions to affect the business.

Visual Analytics enables you to get a handle on your data landscape and to incorporate modern methods for data discovery – including data wrangling, transformation, enrichment and cleansing – in line with the visual analysis. At TIBCO, data discovery is inherently visual and immersive, iterating with “wrangling” the data, to get an understanding of the data and develop insights on the business.

In the O&G industry, the current focus is on production surveillance and optimization.

With equipment in the field, how do you get the most out of it and keep it running efficiently? Given the low price of oil, exploration efforts involve retooling and efficiencies; positioning the capabilities for more optimized approaches. In refining, it’s about optimizing margin and netback. For downstream fuels and marketing, it is about customer analytics, loyalty and lifetime value.

From an analytics perspective, all of these functions and business challenges start with data discovery and visual analytics.

Typically there are many disparate data sets, and companies have mixed environments including relational systems, data lakes and cloud storage. It’s a real heterogeneous environment.

It’s one of the great strengths – attaching to all those data systems,

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Market Insights

14 Feature | Oil & Gas

blending them, wrangling and visualizing the data – is what produces the insights that create value on the business.

Visual analytics aiding in controlling costs Cost control comes into play in a number of ways. Visually, you can explore data efficiently and figure out what investments you need to make to affect the business. Visual analytics enable a disaggregated view on the business – a mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive breakdown that shows what’s working and what’s not working.

Combine that with a set of relevant KPIs and dashboards and you have transparency top to bottom.

In terms of the business and technology applications required, there’s a lot of merit in visually exploring the data to assess strategy options, define tactics and understand day to day operations. When a well has trouble, for example, do you want to put the effort and expense into it to starting it back up, or will such a cost be unjustified for the anticipated near-term return? You may want to let it sit for a while.

In this context, visual analytics allows you to understand your costs, profit and ROI in a way that enables optimal business operations. If there are issues that require a capital injection, you may think twice about that, considering the current market conditions.

TIBCO Insight platform The TIBCO Insight Platform combines systems integration, data management, analytics, collaboration and event processing components into a closed loop system of insight—extracting insights from historical data “at rest” and putting those insights into action on fresh data “in motion”. This applies to data refresh rates that are daily, hourly, Market Insights

Visual Data Analytics

by the minute, second or even subsecond in some applications.

Some examples of critical importance in oil & gas right now include the management of industrial equipment involved in oil and gas production; and drilling operations e.g. kick detection and rate of penetration monitoring. Consider production optimization as a use case. With careful interconnection of systems and application of analytics, a production manager can be physically sitting in Houston, monitoring thousands of wells around the world from close-toreal-time feeds of equipment sensor data. Based on the sensor data stored in historian systems and integrated with advanced analytics tools, that manager is able to visualize patterns and leading indicators for equipment stoppages that the analytics team has developed. The analytics patterns can be simple rules like changes in pump intake pressure, or more flexible empirical models; forming leading indicators to failure conditions such as gas build-up in the downhole, plugged tubing, and the like.

These patterns can then be used to monitor new equipment sensor data in real time, to anticipate when and why equipment-issues may arise. Potential issues can be communicated to responsible engineers for intervention; and managed in a collection of accumulated intelligence on the equipment for ongoing assessment, maintenance, and production optimization.

This is the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) in action, and the energy sector continues to be a technology and business leader in this area.

The TIBCO Insight Platform features interconnected data, systems, and analytics—that enable the analyst and manager’s

Issue 01 | 2017 | www.imarketinsights.com

daily experience. This platform can underpin a company’s intelligent operations with comprehensive data management and analytics logic. TIBCO’s Insight Platform is anchored on TIBCO Spotfire and TIBCO Streambase for visual and streaming analytics. TIBCO EMS, Business Works and Open Spirit may be included for messaging and integration, including data connectors for specialized data sources in the energy sector. TIBCO Active Matrix BPM may be included for Business Process Management and TIBCO Tibbr for collaboration and crowd-sourcing throughout the field and management teams.

TIBCO Spotfire is widely used in the energy space across upstream exploration and production, asset management, supply chain, trading, refining, and downstream fuels and marketing. Spotfire has a large install base in the Energy sector – used by all the majors, across all functional areas, and by most exploration and production companies worldwide. It is deep in geo-analytics and predictive analytics. TIBCO StreamBase is a streaming analytics platform that utilizes a visual programming paradigm to apply math to realtime data streams and is used for equipment maintenance, management of non-productive time (NPT), well operations and real-time drilling applications.

TIBCO BusinessEvents, a stateful, event-driven rules platform allows organizations to quickly build event analytics applications with real-time logic and reasoning.

These analytics applications may be configured with an inmemory data mart TIBCO Live Datamart, combining rich real-time visualizations with continuous queries and user-driven alerts, actions, and responses.

The TIBCO Insight Platform enables equipment management and production optimization in

Oil & Gas | Feature

Visual Data Analytics

real-time, and builds institutional knowledge identifying the kind of equipment components with issues, regions impacted by those issues, and any consistent bad factors in the system. This Enterprise Insight Platform forms a digital nervous system across the field equipment, technical and management staff, providing notifications and alerts to the appropriate engineers who can take action to keep the oil and gas production flowing.

Retaining performance, enhancing speed The TIBCO Spotfire stack features a highly scalable and extensible node-based topology, whereby each of the server components can be configured as a set of parallel functioning nodes. The nodes can be setup behind a load balancer, and requests may be routed to appropriate nodes where an analysis is in-memory. This dramatically improves performance and system resilience. For example, serverside nodes can be configured so that mission critical applications with low latency and/or high throughput requirements can be separated from long running jobs or separate/distinct functional areas.

Analytics can be setup to run in-database or in-memory depending on the usage scenario.

In either case, drill-down to ondemand data can be configured on marking or filtering, facilitating rapid and comprehensive visual data discovery. Automation jobs that refresh in-memory data can be setup to run on a clock or a trigger, so that data is always fresh and dashboards are responsive.

The Spotfire platform is highly performance-driven – capable of high data throughput with low latency performance for large user populations.

Managing budgets in exploration & production companies The oil and gas business is similar to a pharmaceutical business in that large capital investments are required upfront, that there is increasingly more data generated in operations, and that there is great opportunity for data and analytics to inform, track and optimize the investments.

The cost of drilling a well or developing a new drug both involve a significant cost; and have always been data and analytics intensive. For example, both sectors do upfront modelling and simulations before

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they spend millions of dollars.

This helps them to understand the consequences of what might happen.

The future of visual analytics With the low cost of sensors and the high value of industrial equipment, we’re going to see more and more data that are central to oil and gas production and business operations.

Syndicated data is also becoming more available, and combined with document management systems, GIS and data store items. This is critically important in understanding production factors and investment opportunities. And of course, subsurface, geology, seismic and drilling data is central to optimal oil and gas exploration and production.

So the future of visual analytics in the oil and gas business is bright. More and more need to understand data – with visual analytics, data discovery, predictive and prescriptive analytics. Data sources include big data, contextual data, streamed data – all the data from many sources that inform the exploration, production, refining and downstream fuels and marketing aspects of the business. 

About Michael O’Connell Michael O’Connell is the Chief Analytics Officer at TIBCO Software, developing analytic solutions across a number of industries including Financial Services, Energy, Life Sciences, Consumer Goods & Retail, and Telco, Media & Networks. He has been working on statistical software applications for the past 20 years, and has published more than 50 papers and several software packages on statistical methods.

Michael did his Ph.D. in Statistics at North Carolina State University and is Adjunct Professor Statistics in the department. He has written a book titled A Picture is Worth a Thousand Tables.

TIBCO’s chief analytics officer Michael O’Connell

www.imarketinsights.com | Issue 01 | 2017

Market Insights

16 Cover Story | Oil & Gas

OPEC

The industry’s game changer The chain of developments in the oil & gas industry over the past two years has shifted the dynamics for many IOCs and NOCs. Javad Yarjani, former OPEC advisor to the governor of Iran, gives us a look into the proceedings at last year’s OPEC meetings as well as the projections for the oil & gas industry for 2017

OPEC’s recent meetings in Vienna can be considered a game-changer for the global upstream sector.

Can you explain the conditions prevailing at the time and factors that led to the decision of key members to curtail output?

The OPEC meeting held on 30th November, 2016, indeed was a great achievement, not only for oil producers/exporters, but also for the entire oil & gas industry.

The prevailing low oil price Market Insights

environment for much of 2015 and 2016 was having a negative impact on investment, especially in the upstream sector. A continuation of this situation could have an adverse affect on the level of oil supply in few years time pushing oil prices to the very high level again, and affecting the consuming nations negatively. On the other hand, oil exporting countries realized their policy of defending their respective market share had

Issue 01 | 2017 | www.imarketinsights.com

not worked completely. While oil production of oil in certain expensive regions was witnessing a downward trend, companies were able to sustain production at sizeable levels, largely due to improvements in technology.

Budgetary constraints for many oil exporting countries especially after oil price falling below US$30 per barrel in January 2016 helped the concerned countries to look for the ways to end the prevailing

Oil & Gas | Cover Story

OPEC

as an effective organization to impact the oil market has diminished almost to none.

However, the decision of OPEC in its November 30th meeting ended this assumption. As long as there is a need for a balanced oil market, there would be need for organization like OPEC to coordinate the policies of oil exporting countries. Being the supplier of less than 40% of world’s oil supply, OPEC cannot play this role by itself and cooperation of other oil exporters is required to bring stability to the oil market.

The increase in crude oil prices has provided much relief to E&P companies. How does this position the possible completion of major projects in the near and distant future?

excess stocks in the market and that is how events unfolded to lead to an agreement in November 30, 2016.

Can you emphasise on the role of OPEC in determining the movement of the global oil market? Do you believe OPEC has managed to silence its detractors with this deal?

Many in the oil industry strongly believed the role of OPEC

There have been many projects, which had been shelved as a result of low oil price environment.

Naturally those projects could still be revived if the prospect of an improved oil price for the coming years is shared by a majority of international and national oil companies (NOCs). However, the oil & gas industry is a dynamic one and recent geopolitical developments will have a big effect on decisions of investors.

If Russia succeeds in ending sanctions against its oil industry as a result of possible change of US policy under President Donald Trump, major investments that have been put on hold have quite a good chance to be revived. Iran is another possible beneficiary of new upstream investment, provided geopolitical developments do not turn against the country. The first six months of this year will be decisive for finding out the answers of most of the uncertainties currently prevailing at the oil market concerning price level and

17

subsequent investments.

OPEC’s prediction of oil priced at US$60/bbl by the end of the decade has been perceived as bold. Do you think this scenario is possible by 2020?

OPEC, as an organization, does not prescribe price levels. The US$60 per barrel mentioned in OPEC’s 2016 World Oil Outlook, as emphasized by organization in the said publication “is not a desired price path for OPEC crude”, neither is it the “Secretariat’s price forecast. This price level should only be considered as a working assumptions needed to develop a reference case scenario”. However, OPEC member countries may still announce their respective oil price preferences, but that has nothing to do with OPEC policy.

Can you discuss the potential synergy between OPEC and nonOPEC members for creating a framework for oil prices in the future?

The historic decision of major non-OPEC oil producers in their joint meeting with OPEC member countries on 10th December 2016 to reduce their respective oil productions manifested that stability of the oil market is a necessity, which cannot be achieved by just OPEC. Other major oil exporters also need to cooperate in order to help bringing the stability to the oil market, which will benefit the oil consuming nations in the long run as well.

OPEC’s World Oil Outlook 2016 has revealed that developing nations, led by Asia Pacific, will be at the forefront of demand growth, while Middle East will continue to a major supplier. What is the region’s game plan to sustain supply?

There is no doubt since Asia

www.imarketinsights.com | Issue 01 | 2017

Market Insights

18 Feature | Oil & Gas

Pacific region is home to many fast-growing economies, hence the demand for oil is expected to remain strong in this region for the foreseeable future. This kind of demand growth for mature economies of OECD countries, at best, could be stable or with minimum decline. Since OPEC is expected to play a bigger role in meeting the global oil demand in the coming years, it’s very natural to witness growing interdependence between this region and Middle Eastern Countries. Meanwhile, Russia and major oil producers in Africa and Latin America will play their major roles in meeting rising oil demand in the Asia Pacific. As we have seen in recent years, increased investment of major oil consuming nations of the Asia Pacific in the oil producing countries of the Middle East is the most prudent way of guaranteeing the continuous oil supply to countries like China and India in the coming years.

Iran’s rising production figures were a cause of concern before the deal was finalised. How is the relationship between Iran and OPEC? Iran’s oil production rise in 2016 has not been the result of new investments in the country. The country was trying to bring back its oil production to pre-sanction

OPEC

levels. The agreement of OPEC in its November meeting was a clear indicator that Iran’s endeavour to return to its production of years before the imposition of sanctions has been recognized by its comembers in the organization. If Iran decides and succeeds in increasing its oil production, commensurate to its huge oil reserve in the future, I believe OPEC would be able to accommodate that due to the fact that a lion’s share of world oil demand should be satisfied by OPEC.

years of up and downs in the oil market. I believe the importance of Organization for bringing stability to the oil market now is a known fact, even for its critics. However, since there is great deal of uncertainty about energy policies of the next US administration, we need to wait and see the unfolding the events in coming months of 2017.

How does the deal position shale production in the USA?

One of the sectors affected rather negatively by a low oil price environment was the clean energy sector. It is well-known fact at oil prices below US$30 a barrel, almost all projects promoting renewable energy would be uneconomical. With prospect of a better balanced oil market and reasonable oil prices for the coming years, renewable energy could continue its development. It is also a fact that renewables should play their righteous place in meeting world energy needs in the coming year. Fossil fuels will remain the dominant source of mankind’s energy needs for many years to come. Advancing the cleaner use of fossil fuel sources is possible and developed economies need to play a proactive role in this aspect. 

Shale oil production is a fact of life and it is not up to OPEC, to affect the other type of oil production.

The level of oil prices in the future and geopolitical development and concern for the environment are and will remain the main determinant of the oil production around the world. If geopolitical concerns subside in the Middle Eastern region, the tendency to produce oil from much more expensive area will subside to a large degree.

How do you think Donald Trump’s presidency will affect OPEC and its members?

I mentioned my views concerning possible impact of Trump presidency on the oil market.

OPEC has survived more than 55

A renewable energy mix is being perceived as the future. How does this affect the relevance of OPEC?

About Javad Yarjani: Javad Yarjani is a senior freelance oil & energy consultant, based out of Vienna, Austria. He has formerly served as a senior international advisor to Iranian energy company Petropars.

Prior to that, he was the general manager of OPEC and the Energy Affairs Department in Iran as well as OPEC advisor to the Iranian governor.

He has headed the Petroleum Market Analysis Department Market Insights

Issue 01 | 2017 | www.imarketinsights.com

at OPEC Secretariat and served as Managing Director of the International Bureau for Energy Studies. Mr Yarjani was also responsible setting up the international affairs department for the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) in Singapore, and was concurrently appointed the president of the NIOC procurement office in Tokyo, Japan. In the NIOC, he held a key role overseeing the marketing and export of crude oil to major Asian markets including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China and India.

www.sogat.org SPONSORS

S

26–30 March 2017, Abu Dhabi

our field development plans are ongoing throughout the Middle East, given the gas demand and none more so than in the UAE where priorities in ADNOC’s integrated gas master plan include tapping into deep and sour gas reserves and deploying innovative CCUS for EOR. SOGAT 2017 has been designed to reflect these interests with the Advisory Committee specifically selecting workshops and papers in the conference progamme as shown below. Moreover special arrangements have been made with ADNOC for a group of 100 senior technical managers to participate in SOGAT thus ensuring highly active networking and interactive discussion for the benefit of all parties involved in these ongoing plans.

SOGAT Workshops

March 26-27

SOGAT Workshops will be highly practical in nature and allow for interactive discussion to address delegates’ concerns and issues and will focus on: Amine Treatment; Sour Gas Process Optimisation and Simulation; Improving SRU Cost Efficiencies and Associated KPI’s; CCUS in Reality – Regional Application, Technology, HSE, Economics and Policy; Novel Methodologies in Mercaptan Removal, and are separately bookable.

13th International SOGAT Conference

March 28-30

The Conference Programme will feature such technical topics as: Energy recovery in CO2 removal processes Case study of SRU and AGE facilities installed in a newly discovered gas field in Egypt Successful implementation of flare gas recovery systems Performance improvements in AGR from ultra sour wells Dealing with CO2 cycling due to CO2-EOR Operational process safety experiences at the Shah field Recovery processes for small to medium remote sulphur load fields Specialised solvent to improve H2S removal performance Energy performance benchmarking of gas sweetening units New developments in analyzers for continuous monitoring of H2S in gas streams New developments in tube sheet linings Novel approaches to sour well testing Digital platforms to improve SRU reliability, performance and reduce operating costs Please visit www.sogat.org to view the full programme of which 80% plus of the presentations are case studies from operators’ experiences.

SOGAT Exhibition

March 28-30

Exhibitors include Energy Recovery, Huntsman, OHL Gutermuth Industrial Valves GmbH, Al Hosn Gas, DOW, Worley Parsons, Sulphur Experts, John Zink Hamworthy and many more.

Please visit www.sogat.org/exhibition to review the shell scheme, floor plan and availability.

Media Partner

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For further information on all aspects of SOGAT 2017 and to reserve your delegate places please refer to www.sogat.org or contact Nerie Mojica at: Dome Exhibitions, PO Box 52641, Abu Dhabi, UAE E: nerie@domeexhibitions.com T: +971 2 674 4040

20 Feature | Oil & Gas

Bridging The Gender Gap

Pink power in Oil & Gas For female employees world over, shattering the metaphorical glass ceiling is as important as getting the job done. There are still some sectors that lack due representation of female employees or have multiple firewalls laden with preconceived notions about their capabilities. The oil and gas sector is one such

Market Insights

Issue 01 | 2017 | www.imarketinsights.com

Oil & Gas | Feature

Bridging The Gender Gap

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he energy sector has been dogged with reports of improper gender representation at the top levels.

A recent report by US-based consultancy Korn Ferry has revealed that only 6% of CEOs in energy companies are women.

The numbers of C-level female executives in other sectors weren’t very high - consumer (9%), financials (5%), life sciences (<1%), industries (4%) and technology (5%). Korn Ferry

managing principal Peggy Hazard said, “Having more women at the top is a priority for our clients.

However, the needle is not moving as quickly as any of us would like to see.”

Despite several studies and research surveys showing that diverse senior teams provide better corporate results, the reality is far removed. “Women are still not making it to the very top spot at the rate they should,” said Joseph McCabe, vice-chairman, Global Human Resources Centre of Expertise, Korn Ferry.

Many believe this skewed representation in sectors, especially in the technical and technological aspects of business can be attributed to basic primary level education. Aida Araissi, founding director of the USArab Chamber of Commerce, said, “When the workplace reflects society, it is a healthier environment for everyone. Things need begin at the K-12 level with encouragement of girls to study STEMS (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). That’s the first step.”

While women attempt to bridge the existing gap in the hiring chain by up-skilling, cultural and social biases threaten to hold them back.

Katie Mehnert, CEO of Pink Petro believes that women with children are perceived to have no ambition to progress. She recollects a time when she was asked by a man what “a pretty young lady” like her was doing in a dark dangerous business like oil. She says, “This is a male-dominated industry but there are plenty of opportunities for women and women want to jump in tanks and pop out of helicopters, or run a plant. We need to stop the stereotype of “what is women’s work” and “what is men’s work”. Roles have evolved and our industry has plenty of opportunities for women.”

21

There are a range of skilled jobs being taken by women in the oil & gas sector such as in geology, geo-science, surveying, engineering, chemical engineering, environmental management, mechanical engineering, database management, software programming, drilling, driving and mobile operations. However, there is little to no way to measure the inclusion of women and consequent diversity in jobs. Last year, Pink Petro collaborated with the World Economic Forum on a Call to Action that was signed by 23 oil & gas companies. Called the HERWorld Connect Forum, the aim of the Call to Action plan was to present to the C-suite methods to encourage companies to take more collective action to increase female representation in energy companies. “It has been proven that diversity and inclusion impacts the financial health of a company. We need strong sponsorship from the C-suite and a relentless focus on developing a healthy pipeline of talent and we need to continue to celebrate the accomplishments of women in industry and get their voices heard through media – not just our trade media but through the mainstream media,” added Mehnert.

Sustained awareness campaigns and extensive employment measures to reduce the gender gap has also caught the attention of companies that are taking notice of a widening gap in their leadership structures. In a World Economic Forum (WEF) report, companies in nine global industries were asked how they rank gender parity as a leadership priority. Energy companies ranked it highest, citing the leveraging of female talent a key concern for leaders.

C-level male executives too are

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Market Insights

22 Feature | Oil & Gas

aware of the hiring trends in the sector, and believe that credentials alone should be the precursor to hire a professional. Rajeev Daswani, managing director at Marami Metal Plating concedes to the fact that workplace balance is affected due to improper gender representation. “I do not believe that any one demographic should be omitted, be it gender, race or culture. The truth is the best teams always have a good mix of all, as that brings in a variety of ideas, strengths and solutions. The world is increasingly becoming a smaller place, where the integration of people truly has resulted in great advancements of mankind and science and technology continue to grow at a tremendous pace, this could not have been done if everyone had not or does not contribute. In order for humanity to continue to excel we need to create more opportunity for all, while diminishing the beliefs that there are differences.”

Large energy conglomerates too are now setting examples by hiring women in high positions.

In the past few years, Maersk Oil and Occidental Petroleum have announced women CEOs. Duke Energy and Sempra Energy are both led by women CEOs – Lynn Good and Debra Reed respectively. On Emirati Women’s Day 2016, ADNOC announced it is seeking to appoint at least one female CEO within its group of operating companies. It has also set a target to ensure 15% of senior managers will be women, as well as committing to increasing the number of new Emirati women recruits to 30 per cent by 2020, stated the ADIPEC website.

“Even in the Middle East, there is high priority given to supporting women leadership in the energy sector. The CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) Market Insights

Bridging The Gender Gap

announced there would be a subsidiary female CEO by 2020.

Kuwait Oil’s CEO, Sara Akbar, has been a trailblazer the past decade internationally and regionally. But more is needed,” said Araissi.

In addition, efforts are being taken by organizations such as Pink Petro and Women in Energy among others to highlight gender disparity and form ways to bolster employment of women, not just at the C-level but across the organizational hierarchy.

ADIPEC, one of the largest oil and gas shows that was held in Abu Dhabi in November 2016, had a seminar titled Women in Energy 2016, which addressed a host of current industry trends through panel discussions and live surveys. Four case studies were highlighted, which examined investment opportunities in the upstream sector, innovative technology in Germany’s E&P sector, how national oil companies (NOCs) are bridging the supply and demand for gas as well as the latest technologies in the offshore and marine sector.

In addition, there were three panel discussions that covered the clean energy revolution, innovation in times of downturn as well as positioning women in the global energy industry.

At Africa Energy Indaba, scheduled to be held in February 2017 in Johannesburg, there will be a conference titled 2nd Annual Women in Energy Conference, intended to discuss how departments within companies can advance their talent agenda and strategize competitive advantage by hiring, attracting, developing, retaining, sponsoring and promoting women in every industry sector.

A large number of industry veterans believe that aside from forming action plans and initiating campaigns, having real-life role

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models, who can tell their stories on global platforms, are very important.

“Mentorship and role models are very important to young women as they begin to plan their careers. If they look up and they don’t see any women at the top, then could get discouraged and begin wondering if they’re in the right industry,” noted Araissi.

Recently, the US-Arab Chamber of Commerce honoured women from ExxonMobil, Statoil, Aramco and GPIC, who are all veterans in their fields. “Their stories need to be highlighted for the next generation to emulate,” added Araissi.

The future?

Hiring in energy is witnessing a sea-change. From the 1980s, women entered the O&G sector in administrative roles, human resources and legal, but now there is a slow but sure representation of women in sciences such as geology, geophysics and petroleum engineering. Some more are clambering up to procure senior management roles as well, but women like Araissi believe the figures are nowhere near where they need to be.

Following the slide in oil prices in 2014, the energy sector has witnessed a huge amount of layoffs. As the oil prices are rallying back up, there is a possibility to witness a change in hiring trends. Worldover, the industry is focusing on womenfriendly programmes through flexi-hours, parental leave or mentorship schemes.

The overall feeling is one of optimism for a balanced workforce and better future.

While women trailblazers were exceptions earlier, the industry is slowly moving towards making them the norm. 

Africa

Oil & Gas | Feature

23

the league of natural gas producers Natural gas is hailed across the energy industry as the next major provider of electricity, and Africa could very well be a game-changer in this area in the years to come

A

friCA COntinues tO be a bountiful land for those keen to invest. Among its multiple reserves of natural resources is natural gas, considered an ecofriendly alternative to coal for production of electricity.

Over the years, natural gas is gaining relevance as a sound investment option in the sub-continent. Several major finds offshore Tanzania, Mozambique and Uganda, among others, have boosted investor confidence and spurred positive reports of high ROIs in the future.

the need for natural gas Following the Paris climate change agreement, where countries pledged to bring down the global surface temperature by 2 C, the onus is on energy companies now to adopt climate-friendly measures for power generation.

Among fossil fuels, natural gas is considered the cleanest and most environment-friendly. Due to its relatively simple chemical composition and lesser impurities, it is one of the more viable fossil fuels around. Already, countries like the USA, Russia, Iran, China, Japan, UAE and EU members are using natural gas for their electricity needs.

east Africa as a natural gas production giant Africa, specifically East Africa enjoys a clear advantage. The East African belt is richly endowed with offshore and onshore deposits of oil and natural gas. Mozambique and Tanzania are among the region’s most prolific gas production centres, offering heightened opportunities for LNG export by 2020, said the East African Oil & Gas Market 2015-2025 report.

Tanzania, in particular, has fast established itself as a natural gas major since 2010. UAE’s Dodsal Group claimed to have found 2.7 tcf of gas in the country’s Ruvu Basin Coast Region – if certified, could very well be among the largest gas finds in the country. Earlier, 1.03 tcf of gas was found in Kamba and Fulusi, facilitating the entry of Tanzania into the cluster of major gas-producing nations.

More recently, Egypt discovered a major gas field that’s expected to be at a significant level by 2019, according to London-based consultants Energy Aspects Ltd. For this North African nation, political unrest has unsettled the market and the government plans to keep the gas for its own use, in order to avoid a hefty import bill. However, consumption is expected to surpass domestic demand by 2020, following which Egypt can potentially export its gas.

Other leading finds have been made in Nigeria, Mozambique, Equatorial Guinea, Algeria and Libya. Of the lot, Mozambique appears to have made the largest ever discovery of natural gas, based on local reports. It is estimated that nearly 75 tcf of gas is lying off Area 1, run by USA’s Anadarko and could make Mozambique a top three global gas exporter after Qatar and Australia.

The find is expected to cost around US$15bn and could supply 15 years of USA’s residential demand.

Meanwhile, Kenya’s oil & gas market is expected to see a capex of US$482mn, added the report, as a result of strong onshore and offshore exploration and production. Prospects for oil & gas in Uganda too look very promising, while Ethiopia’s upstream development and midstream capex is expected to touch US$432mn in 2025.

A goldmine waiting to be unlocked?

It was back in 2003 that George L Kirkland, president of ChevronTexaco Overseas Petroleum Inc., said how Africa is on the “verge of winning a second prize” in the form of a new and rapidly growing natural gas business.

He mentioned that with natural gas, Africa can make environmental gains, greater diversity and increase prospects for regional cooperation. While a lot has changed within the global energy demand scenario since 2003, the demand for natural gas has only grown, especially with a rising need to produce environmentally-clean energy.  www.imarketinsights.com | Issue 01 | 2017

Market Insights

24 Event Preview | Oil & Gas

SOGAT

SOGAT BEACH ROTANA HOTEL Abu Dhabi, UAE 26th - 30th March 2017

Setting the stage for sour gas development At this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s SOGAT, industry experts world over will gather to discuss the biggest regional gas projects

T

he Middle East is considered a major player in possession of natural gas reserves and sour gas development. However, of late, sour gas development is getting a fillip from the industry, largely due to the increase in technological

Market Insights

Issue 01 | 2017 | www.imarketinsights.com

advancements in processing and growing demand for alternate forms of energy.

The upcoming SOGAT 2017 will showcase the best of technological advancements and future plans for sour gas field development.

According to the organizers

Oil & Gas | Event Preview

SOGAT

Dome Exhibitions, the leading vendors and suppliers will return to the show this year in addition to a slew of first-time delegates from around the world. Dr Nick Coles, conference director, said, “We are receiving interest from far and wide on these plans and other regional developments occurring in Saudi Arabia and Oman. Delegates are coming from Singapore and China for the first time in addition to the delegations that we normally receive from around the world.”

Industry experts collectively feel that exchanging data and scientific processes help each other develop the ecosystem. At SOGAT 2017, through a series of workshops and conference will help attendees understand the latest developments in the sector, in addition to developing their professional networks.

SOGAT so far The show made its beginning in 2004. According to the organizers, its tenth anniversary was attended by more than 400 participants and more than 100 exhibitors.

That year, six workshops were conducted, which included amine treatment and gas compression.

In 2015, SOGAT began its first technical tour of GASCO’s Habshan V facilities.

Looking ahead 2017 appears to be a promising year for sour gas development. The world’s first ultra-sour gas project, the Al-Hosn gas development project, has been officially opened.

A joint venture between Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and Occidental Petroleum, the Shah Gas Project is among the most advanced sour gas projects in the world. With an estimated 1bn scf of gas production per day, the project can make a significant contribution to UAE’s gas supply

for the next 30 years. Dr Coles added, “The interest in SOGAT 2017 is high given not only its reputation as the international meeting place for all parties interested in sour hydrocarbon technical management challenges but also the recent announcement on ADNOC’s integrated gas master plan that incorporates tapping into deep sour gas reserves, increasing the capacity of Shah’s gas processing capacity by 50 per cent and deploying innovative CCUS for EOR elements of which are covered in this year’s event.”

UAE has the seventh-largest proven natural gas reserves at 215 standard cu feet (scf), stated a report by the Oxford Business Group. Given its highly corrosive nature due to high quantities of hydrogen sulphide it possesses, sour gas extraction was a costly and moderately successful process. However, technological advancements have spurred companies and research entities to focus on methods to make extraction easy. At SOGAT, workshops on sour oil & gas process optimization, amine treatment, improving SRU cost efficiencies and associated KPIs and benefits of hybrid solvents for mercaptan in natural gas will be discussed. At the conference, the latest developments in sour hydrocarbon management will be highlighted.

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Aside from the UAE, sour gas development is gaining steam across the region. Data from SOGAT’s organizers stated that Saudi Aramco’s Fadhili Gas Project, estimated at US$13.3bn, is due for completion in 2019 and expected to treat gas from onshore and offshore fields to the tune of 17 bcf/d by 2020.

Other major gas development projects are Wasit and Midyan, offshore Hasbah field. In Qatar, the Barzan Project is expected to begin this year. It will add more than 1.4bcf/d together with significant additional increases in field condensate, ethane, propane, butane and sulphur.

Back in Oman, the Petroleum Development Organization (PDO) is gaining momentum with the Rabab-Harweel integrated project, with sour gas from Rabab injected into the sour oil Harweel field to enhance recovery.

Plans at Budoir following the discovery of additional gas reservoirs for the first ever water injection project into sour oilfield are under review. Iran is also operating offshore drilling at Pars Phase 14 and will likely produce 56.5 mln cm/d of sour gas. A recent announcement from Kuwait Oil Company involves targeting oilfields to produce 4 mn bppd by 2020 and within this plan there are several gas considerations. Additionally, sulphur treatment facility contracts have been recently awarded at Kuwait’s Sabriya and East Raudhatain gas treatment plants.

SOGAT will allow delegates to find opportunities to enhance their business ideas as well as grow their professional networks.

As one of the premier sour gas shows in the region, SOGAT is redefining standards of best practice, industry knowledge and insights. 

www.imarketinsights.com | Issue 01 | 2017

Market Insights

26 Trainings

Overview

Addressing skill development in a progressive economy

I

n a world where automation and technology are making giant leaps and bounds to make businesses more resilient to human impact, employers will continue to seek and nurture candidates who possess both functional skills as well as soft skills. These are as demanded by the nature of their roles and tasks.

Given the constantly increasing levels of competition, remote collaboration, evolving practices and regulations coupled with a millennial workforce has led many organizations to devise adaptive strategies to their learning and development programmes. While learning & development professionals still face many hurdles such as aligning training and business goals, measuring the impact of learning, covering critical competencies and skills gaps in the organization, there is an underlying need to be innovative, to manage change, and to keep pace with learning technologies and trends that will help the organization build internal capacity and eventually, boost organic growth.

International Market Metrics (IMM), a full-fledged provider of public training courses and bespoke in-company programmes was launched under the International Finance Publications banner in April 2016 to cater to the rising need for organizations to develop their most valuable assets – their people.

In a short span of time, IMM has delivered multiple short courses across Middle East, Africa and Asia on topics ranging from financial reporting to advanced practices in internal auditing. Financial services training remains a stronghold of IMM. Given how the financial services space is evolving every day, keeping abreast of industry trends is absolutely vital to provide customers the most relevant, updated and useful training programmes. Concepts such International Financial Reporting Standards and Internal Audit are among the most popular courses organized by IMM, and there is a high possibility of seeing these courses with the latest industry and standard practice updates in 2017.

In addition to covering in-demand topics in 2016, IMM charted new territories simultaneously by launching training programmes using emerging concepts such as gamification, crisis communication planning and industrial hygiene. Being keyed in to major industry trends is IMM’s mission and one can Market Insights

Issue 01 | 2017 | www.imarketinsights.com

expect a host of new concepts being tried out this year as well.

2017 looks promising as we are keen to take our successful concepts to newer markets. As a training facilitator, it is imperative to match training needs with the right kind of audience and a good part of this year will be dedicated to achieving that. We are exploring markets in Europe and Asia, in addition to emerging markets in the Middle East and Africa.

From market research and client feedback, we have come to understand training courses are constantly in demand, given how every industry is evolving at a rapid pace. The trainings team at IMM aims to capitalize on the buzz and provide custom-made solutions for markets.

Having an evolved and educated workforce is the strength of any organization, and IMM strives to help you achieve unparalleled levels of competence in your workforce. The goal will be to keep our new and existing clients up to speed with the latest developments by providing relevant courses and trainings.

Finally, 2017 will largely see inclusion and active participation in the training programmes. Our worldclass trainers understand it better than anyone else that knowledge is best gained through practical, hands-on experience and clients will get a chance to sit on workshops, present case studies, write exams and add to the interactive value of a training programme.

We’re immensely excited and hope to expand our footprint in newer avenues this year. We invite you to write in your queries as well as provide feedback. If there are any specific corporate needs that you would like us to address, we’re happy to assist you with formulating relevant training programmes.

Samir Ahmed Programme Director International Market Metrics For programme queries, contact Sam Taylor (sam.taylor@imarketmetrics.com) www.imarketmetrics.com

Trainings 27

Overview

Crisis Communication Planner - Abu Dhabi, UAE

IFRS - Maputo, Mozambique

Gamification - Dubai, UAE

Internal Audit - Colombo, Sri Lanka

IFRS - Beirut, Lebanon

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for Banks & Oman

For more details, log on to www.imarketmetrics.com * Please note that schedules are subject to change.

30 Trainings

CTPRP

How to manage third party risks in organizations Tom Garrubba is a certified CTPRP trainer and senior director at Shared Assessments. He is experienced in IT risk and information controls, who also develops and consults on third party risk (TPR) programmes for Fortune 100 companies.

Quick Strategies to Implement Now for a Third Party Risk Management Programme Boards of Directors, c-suites, and – yes – regulators too - have made it clear that organisations must start addressing risks associated with critical third parties.

As companies’ third party risk strategies are being rapidly deployed in organisations, it’s important to make sure you have a fundamental understanding of key components to help ensure you’ll have a successful programme Key Programme Components Tone at the top

Significant risk assurance benefits come from high levels of engagement at board and c-suite levels

Programme Alignment

This assures appropriate risk management programme support enterprise-wide

Polocies and Processes

Good policy is built on sound processes, formal documentation and good communication

Contracts

Clearly defined service level agreements (SLAs), including risk monitoring and oversight expectations

Identifying and Assessing Vendors

Proper inventory development alongside ongoing risk monitoring and oversight support programme sucess

Source: The Santa Fe Group, Shared Assessments Program. 2016

Market Insights

Issue 01 | 2017 | www.imarketinsights.com

Tone at the Top Tone at the Top is of utmost importance to success in any programme, and corporate directors are getting on board the third party risk train. In a 2016 Ponemon Institute study, board directors appear to understand the importance of third party risk and are communicating to the c-suite about the need to assess at least their companies’ critical third parties. Board, as well as senior management, involvement provide significant benefits including: • Making the discussion happen and ensuring that the discussion is strategic and purposeful; • Providing the support and tone for the organisation’s people, process and investment in the management of third-party risk; • Reducing the risks of working with third parties that are untrustworthy; • Incorporating integrity, ethics and trustworthiness in relationships with third parties; and • Increasing awareness of the importance of security, data protection and business resiliency.

Programme Alignment A critical component to consider is the alignment of your programme; that is, where your programme is going to

Trainings

CTPRP

reside within the enterprise. This helps to ensure the programme receives the adequate level of support. It is a good idea to define and establish the programme in one of the lines of defense in one of the following ways: •

The First Line - Business Operations: The business unit is responsible for ensuring that a risk and control environment is established as part of dayto-day operations. In this scenario, business line management should have sufficient skills in risk tolerance and in performing risk assessments.

•

Second Line - Oversight Functions: Departments such as Finance, Risk Management, and even Human Resources, establish limits by implementing policies and procedures as well providing guidance and direction to corporate requirements, ultimately ensuring program execution within corporate guidelines.

•

Third Line - Independent Assurance Providers: Compliance and Audit normally fill these roles (either internal or an external compliance provider), as they provide an independent review and objective opinion.

Policies and Processes When you’ve identified who will manage the programme, you need to start documenting your key processes, applicable standards, departmental practices and ultimately craft your policy. Processes are a series of documented actions or operations and these should be streamlined based on operations. The questionnaires and assessment steps, internal and external resources, documentation to be reviewed, turnaround times, and the communication and reporting protocols all need to be documented. Your daily tasks or practices (that is, your way of “doing things”) need to be consistent and understood by the management who owns the programme. Lastly, the policy which provides the governance “teeth” of the programme needs to be written, approved, and communicated by the appropriate c-suite across the applicable business units or enterprise.

Contracts To ensure success, be sure that all stakeholders are involved in contract development and that roles are documented and clearly defined. Standards for mandatory contract provisions need to be included for third party outsourcing (i.e., your “fourth parties”) are to be outlined. Be sure to establish: •

Standards for termination and procedures to review existing contracts for compliance within current contract standards and appropriate performance-based provisions;

•

A process to ensure the inclusion of contract

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provisions consistent with vendor risk classifications/ratings •

That you have established criteria for a contract review cycle consistent with that vendor risk classification/rating.

Identifying and Assessing Your Vendors How to acquire your vendor inventory is a common issue. The best answer; follow the money. Start by reaching out to your accounts payable department and request a spreadsheet or similar report of all vendors to which monies have been paid out over the past year. Then, begin to reconcile these with procurement and the business unit to better understand the scopes of work for the engagement, the data elements (such as personally identifiable information, credit card data, etc.), where the work is being performed and any fourth parties that may be exposed to the data. You should also develop criteria that separates vendors encountering such data and processes from those with non-critical assignments (such as landscapers and caterers).

Additionally, an assessment tool(s) needs to be identified and applied to assess these vendors’ overall security and privacy postures. The Shared Assessments Standardized Gathering Questionnaire (SIG) and the Agreed Upon Procedures (test procedures), which have been used in the US for well over a decade are recognised as industry standards and are excellent sources to provide guidance as they are mapped to various global regulatory guidance, ISO, PCI, and other standards and best practices.

It is very important to note that a vendor assessment is not a one-and-done deal. It is important to reassess these vendors as scopes of work, data elements, and processing locations change. These reassessments should be based on risk tiering within your organisation. Critical vendors should be reassessed between 12 and 24 months, while lowertiered vendors can be stretched out further.

Fourth parties also need to be identified by the third party in the third party’s contract, and provisions should include the notification to you as the outsourcer about how the fourth parties are chosen and will be handled.

You should also ask the third party if they’ve obtained any external assessment documentation (e.g., SIG, AUP, SSAE16, ISAE 3402, SOC2, etc.) detailing the assessment of these fourth party vendors, to provide you assurance as to their own assessment and risk methodology.

By considering/incorporating these components into your overall implementation strategy you will be well on your way to laying a solid foundation for a successful third party risk management programme.

And, as your corporation’s risk tolerance and strategy changes, you can rest assured that your programme’s foundation is on solid footing and will need only occasional tweaks and adjustments to stay on track.  www.imarketinsights.com | Issue 01 | 2017

Market Insights

32 Trainings

Role of HR

Agile business, Agile workforce Renowned management and HR trainer Tom Talbot gives us the low-down on when is the right time to incorporate change in a company and the ways to go about achieving substantial goals with a workforce for overall organizational improvement

developing business Agility and the role of hr Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, is quoted as saying “change is the only constant in life.” This saying has also been translated to “the only constant is change.”

Philosophy has often told us that “the only constant in life is change”. This saying is as true in business as it is for life as a whole.

The ability to adapt to change is seen by many as a key strategy to maintaining competitive advantage. Within organisations the ability to anticipate and address the forces affecting the business is often described as having ‘business agility’.

This agility is described by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development ‘Shaping the Future report’ 2011), as being: Market Insights

“the ability to stay

open to new directions and be continually proactive, helping to assess the limits or indeed risks of existing approaches and ensuring that leaders and followers have an agile and change ready mindset to enable them and ultimately the organisation to keep moving, changing, adapting”.

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The core principles of being agile are well established in the IT world, where the traditional cascade approach to software development became the greatest barrier to progress for fast moving, customer driven projects. Software development is an intuitive challenge demanding a fast response as things unfold during the development itself. The solution was to embrace a new way of working that enables the requirements and solutions to evolve through the collaborative efforts of cross functional teams. The success of the project requires the customer to be clear about what the end product should deliver, even if the process of achieving that is unclear. The project is then developed in small time framed increments known as sprints. A sprint has a clear deliverable for the set time period,

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Role of HR

which when completed informs the deliverables for the following sprint. Each sprint seeks to build on the delivered output from the previous sprint as the project unfolds.

The sprints enable teams to respond to any unpredictability through team discussion and empirical feedback. The process encourages a fast and flexible response to change through adaptive planning, evolutionary development and continuous improvement. It also embraces techniques from other continuous improvement methodologies, such as lean manufacturing.

The adoption of the approach more widely across a business has enabled organisations to embrace an Agile Working paradigm across all departments and functions. Agile Working does not simply mean “flexibility” but it is transformational for those involved and enables them to trigger change and innovation across the company.

In an agile world, the role of HR is to become the facilitator of change at all levels and to provide the environment that supports this style of working. The development of agility across the workforce can only be achieved if HR creates an environment that encourages and supports adaptability, innovation and collaboration.

HR business partners and practitioners need to develop

About Tom Talbot

the skill and ability to get results through influence alone. Not all of these initiatives need to be large complex projects. Collaborative networks can be created that involve remote sites through the use of IT and for example, using company intranet or closed collaboration and social media platforms. These networks can be in-house, cross functional and include suppliers as partners who can be innovative and flexible. The network itself should be able to reconfigure to meet the needs of the business, empowered to form and reform as the project evolves.

The HR teams could be small as this generates speed of decision making and reduces reaction time to any evolving issue. Any regular meeting that exists because’ it always has’ but in reality adds little to no value to a project or business agility development, should be avoided or simply stopped. The teams should have fresh minds and input periodically as this prevents aspects of group thinking.

Some examples of where agile approach to HR could add value to an organisation are: •

Creating a learning organisation, where information and knowledge is shared openly

•

Training managers of all levels to coach their colleagues

•

Focus on feeding forward

Tom is a highly experienced and effective trainer, with international training experience across EMEA countries in areas of management development and the HR field. Tom is passionate about learning and development and has delivered projects for organisations such as British Airways, Barclays and Barclays Africa.

Within the UK Tom has worked within the public and private sectors on projects varying in size and complexity; from national staff engagement events, major roll out programmes, and leading change

to required behaviours and performance rather than the traditional emphasis on reviewing past performance •

Encouraging open and honest feedback

•

Understanding and encouraging customer interaction within all groups and functions

•

Fostering diversity within teams

•

Developing a framework of ‘Just in Time’ training and development

•

Creating self-managed teams

In leading change, the HR department should set the standards and recognise that whilst the future vision is clear, it is a journey and not a destination.

Adopting an agile approach to change will create managers that respond positively to the business pressures. The workforce will have the skills to adapt quickly and seamlessly to new ways of working in an engaging environment, maintaining competitive advantage and delivering customer satisfaction.  – Tom Talbot is expected to conduct trainings in association with International Market Metrics in 2017. Contact Sam Taylor (sam.taylor@imarketmetrics.com) for the latest training schedule.

initiatives to in-house team meetings and personalised executive training. Tom is a qualified coach and coach supervisor, he is a Subject Matter Expert in HR for the CMI, a member of the EMCC and has lectured in HR for Durham and Sunderland Universities.

Tom brings a multi discipline skills set in business and people, combined with management experience and a pragmatic style that adds value and gains delegate buy-in to deliver sustainable results.

www.imarketinsights.com | Issue 01 | 2017

Market Insights

34 Trainings

SERVE leadership

Leading

change from within Dr. Jay Raines, Managing Director of Lead Strategic Development Pvt. Ltd explains how the SERVE leadership model has high relevance across sectors, cultures, organizations and countries

L

eadership styles in business have witnessed massive changes over the years. It’s challenging to lead teams, processes and functions across nations, time zones and cultures, and CEOs often find themselves facing the need to reinvent their strategies.

According to the Center for Creative Leadership, “CEOs identified their number one concern as the growing complexity of their environments, with the majority of those CEOs saying that their organizations are not equipped to cope with this complexity.”

Leaders often feel compelled to reorganize or change structures, as a way to communicate that they have clarity of vision and direction in a complex and uncertain world. Leaders also feel a need to exercise greater control while at the same time realizing the current environment imposes limitation on individual leadership power. Additionally, technology has made it possible for leaders to access more information and communicate more broadly. So, many leaders Market iMarketInsights Insights

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spend their days overwhelmed with the sheer volume of their activities and responsibilities. Leaders at organizational levels are fighting the temptation to “over manage” while desiring that their teams step up and contribute more. The periodic promotion of change becomes the preferred course correction mechanism.

Unfortunately, most change initiatives fall far short of their intended outcomes because most of the energy goes into the drama created by shifts in focus and reporting relationships. The more effective way to change your organization is to create a leadership system and a leadership culture that promotes the long march of change rather than the sprint of change.

SERVE and Lead

One of the most effective models for creating a growing organization in times of change is the SERVE leadership model. The SERVE model helps leaders to systematically provide greater clarity and empowerment.

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SERVE leadership

The SERVE leadership model was pioneered in an organization that had reached a point where they recognized that their growth level was unsustainable in their current form. But rather than first change structure, products, and personnel they asked the question what kind of organization do we want to be and what kind of leadership is needed for that organization. The resulting SERVE leadership model has been a key component in the organization becoming the most profitable business in its market segment and growing from US$1bn to US$6bn in revenue in the last 15 years. Most recently, it was named second best in customer service among all US companies.

The SERVE model is a broad framework of proven leadership practices built on a specific philosophy of serving others • See and Shape the Future • Engage and Develop Others • Reinvent Continuously • Value Results and Relationships • Embody the Values

Each leadership practice reinforces the building of a leadership culture that enables everyone in the organization to have clarity on the collective and individual opportunity to succeed.

To Serve or To Be Served?

The SERVE model challenges a leader to ask a fundamental question about the role of leadership - Is it to serve or be served? The common mindset about leadership is the organization is designed to serve the leader’s needs because the leader is the most important person in the organization or on the team.

The result is that for many organizations, they become leader-centric. The organization or the team reflects the leadership style of whoever is the current leader.

The SERVE model creates a value-driven organization where leadership is distributed throughout the organization. So, the bigger challenge for many leaders is not further developing their existing leadership skills but reframing their perspective on leadership.

In some ways, the SERVE leadership model may be

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Market Insights

36 Trainings

SERVE leadership

easier conceptually for young leaders to grasp. They have grown up in a more connected world where ideas are more easily distributed and communities are more quickly formed and the merit of the idea is more important than the source. Younger leaders are frequently more attracted to a leadership model that values developing many leaders rather than a few. However, a value-driven model like SERVE requires a maturity of character and experiences to overcome the temptation to give into short term pressures. The leadership practice of “Value Results and Relationships” speaks directly to this challenge.

Leading a value-driven organization is usually best done by a leadership team that may possess diversity of age, gender, and nationality but are united by the same vision and values for the organization.

With the rising numbers in women leaders today, the challenges faced by them are similar to that of their male counterparts. However, Dr Raines concurs that women face some unique challenges as well.

“Research indicates that women leaders often value a more nurturing environment which is a natural outcome of the SERVE model. As mentioned earlier, the SERVE model takes the primary emphasis away from the individual leader to the organizational culture. In doing so, leadership becomes less about age or gender and more about values.”

serVe and global leadership dynamics

SERVE Leadership model principles have been imparted in organizations around the world as well as a wide variety of for profit and not-for-profit endeavours, but there not been a differentiating variable in terms of acceptance or resistance in any particular business sector. Similar to most changeoriented challenges, the biggest barrier is not getting a buy-in at the individual level but creating an organizational culture and system that allows transformation to happen.

The SERVE model “challenges a leader

to ask a fundamental question about the role of leadership - Is it to serve or be served?”

The power of the SERVE leadership model is the recognition that change is not only possible, but probable, as organizational leaders change their fundamental beliefs about effective leadership. Once they have reframed their understanding of leadership, the SERVE model provides a pathway to bring about organizational transformation.

How quickly you can become a SERVE leader or SERVE organization is largely determined by your starting point. Or more precisely, how much do you or your organization have to unlearn. For a new leader in a start-up organization, the SERVE Leadership model can become part of your original DNA. But for larger established organizations, the speed of change is largely determined by how quickly you can influence others to experiment with these new leadership principles. For some organizations, a SERVE leadership style first emerges in individual departments as team leaders embrace new ways to lead that creates new leadership opportunities for others. Other organizations may start at the senior leadership level and cascade the SERVE model to lower levels as part of an intentional organizational transformation. Analysing the level and extent of impact of the SERVE leadership model on different sectors and sizes of organizations, Dr Raines observes that larger, established organizations with a long history of centralized leadership face the greatest challenge. The adoption of the SERVE leadership model influences every aspect of organizational life, so while it can take time to become a SERVE organization, the changes start becoming evident quickly. “Our message to leaders is that if you want to build the right organization for the 21st century, you have just enough time but you have to start right now.”  – Dr. Jay Raines will conduct a training session on the SERVE Leadership Model in March 2017 in Dubai, UAE.

Market Insights

Issue 01 | 2017 | www.imarketinsights.com

Knowledge

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Opinion

For business news as it happens, subscribe to Market Insights, the latest magazine from International Finance Publications Ltd. In the upcoming issues, you can expect coverage in: • Oil & Gas • Clean Energy • Communication • Infrastructure • Corporate & Industrial Trainings • Events and Conferences

FOR SALES QUERIES : Adam Lobo | Senior Manager Tel: +44 (0) 207 193 9451| Email: alobo@ifinancemag.com FOR EDITORIAL QUERIES : Sindhuja Balaji | Editor Tel: +44 (0) 207 193 9451 | Email: sbalaji@ifinancemag.com REGISTERED OFFICE : INTERNATIONAL FINANCE PUBLICATIONS LIMITED 843 Finchley Road, London NW11 8NA Tel: +44 (0) 208 123 9436 | Fax: +44 (0) 208 181 6550 | Web: www.imarketinsights.com © International Finance Publications LTD

38 Events | IFM Awards Review | Singapore

Show Review

Raising a toast to the best In its third year, International Finance Magazine Awards are a hallmark of the best in the financial services industry. 2016 was a special one for the company which hosted its first ever awards ceremony in Asia Pacific, at the Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre, Singapore

I

nternational Finance Magazine’s grand gala awards night was a star-studded and classy blacktie affair. Held at the sprawling Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre in Singapore on the 16th of December 2016, the ceremony reinforced the high standards of the banking and financial sector of the Asia Pacific region.

Marked by constantly growing indicators of progress, Asia Pacific is touted as one of the next big regions for economic prosperity in the next decade. Singapore, being a financial and technology hub, was the perfect place to host the company’s first award ceremony in the region. The gala night began with a networking session, where C-suite executives and senior Market Insights

Issue 01 | 2017 | www.imarketinsights.com

management from companies were spotted interacting with one another over hors d’oeuvres and cocktails.

The event was graced by four special guests – H.E Dato’ Ilango Karuppannan, High Commissioner of Malaysia – High Commission of Malaysia; Ms. Bayaraa Temuulen, economic attache, Embassy of Mongolia; Ms Nguyen Thi Thu Minh, investment counselor, Vietnam Embassy in Singapore and Ms Arena Sri Victoria, counselor, Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia.

H.E Dato’ Ilango Karuppannan, High Commissioner of Malaysia – High Commission of Malaysia kicked off the ceremony by presenting awards to the first batch of winners –

IFM Awards Review | Singapore | Events

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guests were entertained by master performer and magician Stefan Ebinger. Born and raised in Germany, Ebinger began his career in IT as a project manager and consultant working in Germany, USA and Singapore.

His foray into the field of entertainment through magic began in 2002 at company events and private parties. His shows usually include the sleight of hand magic, mind reading infused with a lot of humour and audience participation. Ebinger’s act, Followed by a delectable fruity dessert satiated the crowd as they prepared for the next round of awards.

The second set of awards was presented by Ms. Arena Sri Victoria, counselor, Embassy of Indonesia in Singapore – Land Bank of the Philippines – The Philippines

Best CSR Initiative

Azizi Bank – Afghanistan

Best Customer Service Bank

Omnipay – The Philippines

Bank Rakyat – Malaysia

Best Islamic Bank & Best Managed Bank

Sun Life Malaysia Takaful Berhard – Malaysia

Fastest Growing Takaful Company

Azizi Bank – Afghanistan

Best Banking CEO

Land Bank of the Philippines – The Philippines

Most Socially Responsible Bank

Best MPos Platform

Philippines National Bank – The Philippines

Most Innovative Bank

RCBC Bank Services – The Philippines

Best Card Offering

Tenger Insurance Company – Mongolia

Best Insurance Company

CTBC Bank – The Philippines

Best Foreign Retail Bank

Touch Bank – Russia

Most Innovative Retail Bank

The third set of awards was presented by Ms Bayaraa Temuulen, economic attaché, Embassy of Mongolia to Singapore – Land Bank of the Philippines – The Philippines

Standard Chartered – Singapore

Best Credit Card

International Commercial Bank – Laos

Best Retail Bank

Global IME Bank – Nepal

Oman UAE Exchange – Oman

Best Foreign Exchange Provider

Sacom Bank – Vietnam

Best Internet Bank

Bank Rakyat – Malaysia

Best Islamic Retail Bank

BIDV – Vietnam

BIDV

SEA Bank – Vietnam

Most Innovative Credit Card Services

Thai Life Insurance Company Ltd – Thailand

Best Life Insurance Company

The Bank of East Asia – Hong Kong

Best Mobile Banking

Cathay United Bank – Taiwan

Best Corporate Bank

While an elaborate three-course meal was served, the

Most Innovative Lending Platform Best Internet Bank

And the final set of awards were given away by Ms. Ngyuen Thu Thi Minh, investment counselor, Vietnam Embassy in Singapore www.imarketinsights.com | Issue 01 | 2017

Market Insights

40 Events | IFM Awards Review | Singapore

Sacom Bank – Vietnam

Best Credit Card Offering

Home Credit – Vietnam

Most Innovative Consumer Finance Company

BIDV – Vietnam Bac A Bank – Vietnam Tan Viet Securities Incorporation – Vietnam

Show Review

Best Card Payment Service – POS/ATM Most Socially Responsible Bank Best Online Trading Platform

Bank Alfalah – Pakistan

Best Credit Card Offering

SEA Bank – Vietnam

Most Active Banking Leader of the Year

Standard Chartered – Bangladesh

Best Foreign Exchange Bank

Peers and competitors, for a few hours, set aside their competitive differences and celebrated each other’s accomplishments at the IFM Awards. Do keep an eye out for the EMEA edition of IFM’s Awards, held in Dubai, in the second issue of Market Insights. 

Mastering the art of public speaking Singapore’s famous emcee Joe Augustin talks about getting over his inherent shyness, the thrill of being an entertainer and how to maximize an offbeat career path

W

hen the spotlight is on him, Joe Augustin becomes a very different person – he’s witty, smart, charming and engaging. In reality, this renowned Singaporean emcee is a self-proclaimed introvert who studies very hard to be a different personality onstage. “As a child, I was painfully shy but over the years, I’ve trained myself to be on stage and I thoroughly enjoy the buzz.”

Augustin, who was born in Singapore, lived in Malaysia and Brunei but finally returned to Singapore to pursue his studies and eventually become a public speaker. He was barely 18 years old when he made his foray into the entertainment business with a radio show in Brunei. He studied acting, comedy, music, scriptwriting and radio at the Australian College of Entertainers and studied under professional Gary Mac in the Melbourne Radio School. He began his career in a radio station Market Insights

in Singapore and soon after, began emceeing for professional events.

“One of the great things about being an emcee is how dynamic it is – I’m fast on my feet, I love the thrill of being on stage and having to deal with unplanned situations.”

Having grown up with a staple diet of watching seasoned showmasters such as Bill Cosby, George Carlin and David Letterman, Augustin believes the trick to entertain is to look spontaneous but actually be prepared at all times.

So much so, a guest once jokingly accused him of doctoring mistakes on stage in a bid to appear natural.

“I think that’s the best compliment I’ve got to date,” chuckled the jollyfaced emcee.

After having aced his A-levels, Augustin admits that he qualified for law school but chose the “lesser taken path” instead. He has a word of advice – it is necessary to make calculations and assess your career trajectory before taking

Issue 01 | 2017 | www.imarketinsights.com

risks. “Opting for offbeat careers doesn’t have to be perceived negatively, if one assesses his skills correctly and invests wisely.”

Having been in the public sphere for a quarter of a century has taught him a thing or two about people skills. His future plans include becoming a presentation coach, and he believes Singapore needs it. “Being a global hub, there is a dire need for smart and savvy professionals to hone their presentation skills.”

Specifically, he believes introverts need more help gaining confidence on a public platform. “I speak introvert. I have worked around my shyness to make a career out of public speaking and I’m in a better position to help those who cannot.” 

Photo Gallery

IFM Awards Review | Singapore | Events

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Market Insights

42 Events | IFM Awards Review | Singapore

EXCLUSIVE

Setting benchmarks in Afghanistan Afghanistan’s Azizi Bank walked away with some big wins at IFM’s Asia Pacific Awards held in Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands Expo & Centre in December 2016. The company bagged Best Customer Service Bank & Best CEO awards at the ceremony. Market Insights editor Sindhuja Balaji spoke to CEO Mohammad Salem Omaid who discussed Azizi Bank’s latest foray into Islamic banking and digitization among others What are your thoughts about Azizi Bank winning the IFM Award for Best Customer Service Bank?

I am extremely pleased and excited upon winning this award. Azizi Bank has placed major emphasis on improving customer service levels at branches with initiatives starting from training of all category of staff on customer handling processes, dedicated customer care officers at branches, complaint handling methodologies and conducting surveys on customer experience through questionnaires. Going forward, we are planning to engage an external market research company to make an evaluation of our customer service. We strongly believe in customer satisfaction for the enhancement of business and relationships and are committed to taking steps to improvise upon it.

Tell us a bit about your plans for Islamic Banking, which I believe was initiated early this year We are converting our 100% subsidiary bank – Bakhtar Bank into a full-fledged Islamic bank by Q1 201. All the necessary training and software implementation has been done.

This will be the first full Islamic Bank in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

We are also Market Insights

Issue 01 | 2017 | www.imarketinsights.com

changing the name of the bank from Bakhtar Bank to Islamic Bank of Afghanistan. The banking population in Afghanistan is approximately 12-13%, so such a strategic move will increase the banking population in the country, and more people can be inducted to enhance financial inclusion. Azizi Bank, however, will retain its status as a conventional bank.

Yours is among the few Afghani banks that emphasizes on a balanced workforce – how do you implement and retain this aspect in all your branches?

Azizi Bank employs more than 1,500 employees with around 15% women employees. The bank is ensuring its contribution to woman empowerment and emancipation. We maintain a strong position on gender equality and every employee is provided with the opportunity to contribute and grow professionally.

The branches are provided with professional or experienced branch managers. Employees are motivated to perform with regular appreciation, rewards or promotions. We have a professional internal training department, which regulates periodic training for all categories of staff. We also nominate employees for external training programmes – within the country and international. We even hire international trainers for various programmes. Our management board is quite professional – with an average experience of more than 20 years and expatriates from USA, India and other countries.

Can you tell us about the role you play in bolstering small and medium businesses in Afghanistan?

Azizi Bank is the largest “banking group” in the country, with more than 145 branches across all provinces, and contributes to more than 32% of the commercial lending portfolio in Afghanistan. We have contributed not only in the major infrastructural development of the country, but also in financing SMEs and MSMEs. We are engaging ourselves with the relevant international agencies, government institutions and also the World Bank and ADB for such programmes.

EXCLUSIVE

Please elaborate on your schemes like Green Channel and M-Paisa We already have the green channel facility in our branches where people can make withdrawals through POS services. We have M-Paisa integration for agents with a major telecom provider named Roshan as well as M-Commerce integration with another major telecom provider Etisalat. Azizi Bank is already into the mode of digitalization and has invested majorly on technology orientation as per international standards.

The world is moving towards digital banking â&#x20AC;&#x201C; is Afghanistan also seeing a shift in the same direction?

Yes, banks are already inclined towards digitization.

We are already heavily invested on technologyoriented products and intend to be perceived as a tech-savvy bank with a major emphasis on technology-oriented digital banking products by the stakeholders. Core banking solutions have already been implemented. From ATMs to mobile and net banking, Azizi Bankâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s prima facie task is to ensure customer effectiveness with modern banking

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technologies. As part of the strategic digitalized implementation plan, the bank has decided to procure 200 new ATMs, cash dispensers, video and virtual kiosks, and has already strategized extensive coverage in the country.

Can you share your thoughts on the introduction of housing finance?

Commercial and household property business is moving slowly in Afghanistan for the past couple of years as a result of the economic slowdown and mass exodus. We are expecting this sector to improve in the coming couple of years, and then, we can evaluate housing sector finance schemes.

Where do you see Azizi Bank five years from now?

Five years from now, Azizi Bank will be the most favoured bank in Afghanistan, the bank with the best customized products in offering, a one-stop shop for all financial requirements. We will also have a strong international presence in neighbouring countries. ď Ž

www.imarketinsights.com | Issue 01 | 2017

Market Insights

44 Events | Focus Iran Summit

Review

Investments galore in Iran International Finance Magazine and Open Iran Group cohosted their first international investment conference in Tehran on 26th and 27th September 2016. In the midst of growing interest in Iranâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economy, the investment conference highlighted the various opportunities available in the Middle Eastern nation

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eld in the majestic Espinas Palace Hotel in Tehran, the two-day event was attended by a bevy of foreign investors, local companies and consultants.

There were 140 delegates and 30 speakers, where they widely discussed the immediate impact of removal of sanctions on various Market Insights

businesses as well as legal implications of doing business, in what could only be considered as a new era for Iran. The event was opened by Dr Siamak Goudarzi, CEO of Open Iran Group, where he welcomed all delegates, speakers and thanked the sponsors and supporters of the event.

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Key sponsors of the event included Novin Investment Bank and Sohar Port & Freezone. System Group was the official IT partner.

Associate Partners were OneWorld Global Business Services and OneWorld Mid East Global Business Services. The event was supported by the Securities &

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Doing Business in Iran & Decoding the Law

competition. He even explained the various benefits and losses for service companies to set up shop in Iran, in areas such as Greenfield development, licensing, franchising, joint venture opportunities and acquisitions. Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Act (FIPPA) is one of the foremost provisions to foreign investors by the Iranian government. Dr. Siamak Goudarzi, lawyer and CEO of Open Iran Group, explained why it was important for foreign investors to educate themselves on FIPPA. He covered the various investments under FIPPA, such as direct investment and investment through contractual agreements (buyback agreements, civil partnerships and BOT schemes).

FIPPA also covers a range of risks (commercial and noncommercial), and settlement

Santiago Castillo, principal consultant at Roland Berger Middle East, through his presentation elaborated on factors that have affected Iran’s economy to date such as low oil prices, low GDP growth and low FDI inflow.

Castillo explained that to do business successfully in Iran, one would have to understand sanctions, Iran’s history, culture and business landscapes, be aware of middlemen, establish local partnerships and size up the

disputes. Additional guarantees such as Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (WAIPA) will also be provided. FIPPA provides a host of tax exemptions in agriculture, salary, sports, education, cultural activities, tourism, export, handicraft, production and customs, making it more lucrative for foreigners. In addition to FIPPA, there are some other laws that are important for

Exchange, Iran Fara Bourse, Iran Mercantile Exchange and Iran Energy Exchange. Sarosh Zaiwalla, senior partner at London-based firm Zaiwall & Co. along with solicitor Azadeh Meskarian spoke about the legal implications of doing business in Iran, the need for arbitration courts for dispute settlement and performing due diligence. Given Iran’s political history and relationship with its neighbours and foreign nations, political analyst Philip Worman made a presentation on the importance of understand the nation’s political stance and the impact that it could have on business and economy. He also provided a SWOT analysis of what one could expect in the coming months in Iran.

Exchange Organization of Iran, Ports & Maritime Organization of Iran and the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce. Media partners included WorldOils, Techrasa, TIN News and Facemark.

Political, Legal and Economic Landscape The delegate and speaker profile was testimony to the immense amount of interest in the country’s vast reserves of natural resources and economic potential. Dr. Bahador Bijani, vice-chairman, international relations and foreign affairs at SEO Iran, began the conference with his presentation on Iran’s capital markets where he highlighted their relevance for alternate project financing, through the workings of four major entities - Tehran Stock

www.imarketinsights.com | Issue 01 | 2017

Market Insights

46 Events | Focus Iran Summit

businesses to set up in Iran, such as commercial code, export-import regulations, Iranian Tax Code, Customs Law, Labour Law and Laws for Registration and Trademark.

Mining, Banking and the Ministry Support Ministerial support was a mainstay at the conference – the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines & Agriculture’s board member Ferial Mostofi spoke at length about the need for investments in a range of sectors such as telecom, transport, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and mining, emphasizing the need to firm up the industries with standard labour laws and regulations. Recognizing the need for foreign investment in mining, Salman Nasr from IMIDRO put forth the common challenges faced by the Iranian mining industry such as lack of updated databases, government and policy changes and a weak transport framework.

In addition, Keyvan Jafari Tehrani, chairman of IROPEX also elaborated on their plans to feed with global demand for minerals.

As for banking, it is common knowledge that Iran lacked access to international banking and financial services. Bank Mellat’s Mohammad Reza Rezaipour reinstated the bank’s plans to engage its diversification plans as well as improve project funding.

Freezones and SEZs in Iran

Market Insights

Review

A major step ahead to induce FDI inflow as well as increased foreign participation is enabling freezones and special economic zones (SEZs) with incentives and measures. A prime example is the Anzali Free Zone in Iran, which is considered a major hub for heavy industry investment. Mohammad Reza Masrour, chairman of the Anzali Free Zone, in his presentation explained the major legal advantages of free zones in Iran.

Specifically, Anzali Port is the oldest port complex with 10 jetties and a capacity of 10mn tonnes.

For the benefit of Commonwealth nations and Middle East countries, the first commodities exchange was set up in Anzali Free Zone.

Iran and business with the world

A major delegation from Indonesia was present at the event, where they held meetings with various delegates and local businessmen.

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Rudy Radjab, president director of PT Kreasindo Resources Indonesia spoke about Iran as an “energy super power”, its capacity to support Indonesia’s refineries and Indonesia’s keenness to do oil & gas business with Iran. Following up was Donya Moin, legal assistant with Energy Pioneers – one of the leading strategic investment advisories specific to Iran’s energy sector, who stressed improving dispute settlement mechanisms in the Iranian oil & gas sector – namely the ratification of LICA, FIPPA and the New York Convention. Nosrotollah Ebrahimi, vice-president of the GermanIranian Chamber of Commerce elaborated on the future potential for Iran and Germany to enhance their business ties.

Technology and Entrepreneurship Iran’s technology sector is considered among the fastest growing in the region. Be it the rise of start-ups such as Bamilo or the growth of Internet entrepreneurs, the country’s virtual landscape is booming with ideas and the market is ripe for foreign investment. A panel discussion with Iran’s leading technology experts elaborated on the wealth of opportunities in the country, in addition to Iran’s latest Fintech offerings as well. 