13/10/2004 – Mr. Rasheed Al Maraj, the General Manager of APICORP and Mr. Ali Aissaoui of the Project and Trade Finance Department participated to a workshop on Gas Investments in Saudi Arabia held in Riyadh and Jeddah on 12 and 13 October 2004 respectively. The workshop, which was sponsored by the Saudi Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources and Saudi Aramco, is a spin-off from the 1st Saudi Arabian International Gas Conference held in Dammam last May. It was, in the same way, hosted by the local Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CCI) and attended by private investors, bankers and consultants as well as several staff members of the sponsoring institutions.
The workshop had two major objectives:
- Informing the local business communities of the new framework for investments in the gas upstream sector (exploration and development); and
- Discussing evolving opportunities in several key areas of the downstream sector (petrochemicals, power generation and water desalination).
The workshop was very informative and, by all accounts, successful. Considerable interest was shown in the enabling environment and incentive structures progressively put in place by the Saudi government to encourage private participation in the energy sector. It is certainly profitable to APICORP, which will continue to seek an active contribution to such gatherings in order to establish a more visible presence and to better publicize its activities.