Saudi Arabia Oil

12 December 2012

Six individual vital to the success of the kingdom’s planned $7bn Jizan oil refinery: Abdulrahman F al-Wuhaib; Takashi Kawamura; Khaled Abu Nasrah; Marwan Chedid; Casey Choi; and Koichi Kawana

Abdulrahman F al-Wuhaib

Position Senior vice-president, downstream, Saudi Aramco

Biography Abdulrahman al-Wuhaib joined Saudi Aramco employee in 1976 and was appointed to his current role in October 2012. He has a wealth of experience in Aramco’s downstream operations and has worked at some of the firms’s largest oil refineries. In his current role as Aramco’s head of downstream, Al-Wuhaib will oversee the construction of the $7bn Jizan refinery, which is set for completion by early 2017. Prior to his current role, Al-Wuhaib worked as vice-president for information technology, vice-president for engineering services, vice-president of the Ras Tanura refinery and senior vice-president of operations services. He holds a degree in chemical engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia and a master’s in business administration from the University of California, Riverside, in the US.

Contact Tel: (+966) 3 872 0115

Takashi Kawamura

Position Chief executive officer (CEO), Hitachi Plant Technologies

Biography Kawamura is an experienced utilities professional, having joined Japan’s Hitachi Plant Technologies 50 years ago as a graduate. Kawamura became CEO of the company in 2011. Under his leadership, Hitachi won the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract for the utilities at Jizan in October this year. Kawamura now aims to build on this success by adding more Middle East projects to the firm’s portfolio in 2013. Before assuming his current role, he served across several positions at Hitachi, including early assignments as a project and plant manager at several establishments. Senior management positions include managing director, chairman of the executive board and representative executive officer. He also served as chairman of the board for Hitachi Software Engineering. Kawamura graduated with a degree in engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1962.

Contact Tel: (+61) 8 9780 7555

Khaled Abu Nasrah

Position President, Middle East, KBR

Biography Khaled Abu Nasrah was appointed as Middle East president, at US-based engineering consultancy KBR in January 2011. His company will be conducting the front-end engineering and design of the Jizan refinery and is also carrying out the project management consultancy for Aramco. Abu Nasrah has more than 20 years’ experience in the hydrocarbons and infrastructure industries and has served in various roles at KBR throughout his career, including in business development, project contracts management and project controls. Abu Nasrah is a member of the Project Management Institute and the Authority for Total Cost Management. He holds a degree in information systems and marketing from the US’ DeVry University and attended the executive programme at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, also in the US.

Contact Tel: (+971) 4 313 7444

Marwan Chedid

Position CEO for engineering, construction, operations and maintenance, Petrofac

Biography As CEO of Petrofac, Marwan Chedid will oversee the EPC for the main tank farm at the Jizan refinery, as well as the tank farm at the port. Chedid started his career as a workshop engineer for the Kettaneh Trading Company in Lebanon in 1982. Two years later, he joined the Athens-based Consolidated Contractors Company, where he worked as a project manager before joining Petrofac in 1992. At Petrofac, he has worked on several large-scale projects across the Middle East in a number of senior management positions. These include serving in senior project execution positions as well as serving as chief operating officer (COO) of Petrofac International in 2007. Chedid holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon.

Contact Tel: (+971) 6 574 0999

Casey Choi

Position President, SK Engineering & Construction (SK E&C)

Biography Casey Choi joined South Korea’s SK E&C in 2008, as chief technical officer, having spent the previous 30 years in the US. Since 2009, he has been responsible for the firm’s global marketing, oil, gas, petrochemicals, power, telecommunication and civil infrastructure business units. Under his leadership, SK E&C was awarded the crude distillation and vacuum distillation unit at the Jizan scheme. Prior to SK E&C, Choi worked at the US’ Bechtel in key roles in the oil and gas, power, and mining and metals business units. Among other roles, he served as chief information officer for the oil, gas and chemical global business unit in Houston. Choi studied at the US’ University of California, gaining a doctorate in construction management and IT, and a master’s degree in transportation engineering. He also has a degree in civil engineering from South Korea’s Seoul National University.

Contact Tel: (+82) 2 3700 7114

Koichi Kawana

Position President and representative director, JGC Corporation

Biography Koichi Kawana is a long-serving employee of Japan’s JGC Corporation and has worked in several senior roles since he joined the company after graduating in 1982. His previous positions include serving as COO, managing director, chief senior director of sales, director of project business investment promotion and director of new business promotion. In his current position, Kawana has seen JGC win the naphtha and aromatics package at the Jizan refinery project. Under his leadership, the company also picked up an EPC package at the PetroRabigh phase 2 expansion in June 2012. JGC is now the 10th best performing EPC contractor in the Middle East’s oil and gas and petrochemicals sectors, winning just under $1bn of work between July 2011 and June 2012. Kawana has a degree in economics from Keio University in Japan, which he received in 1982.

Contact Tel: (+81) 45 682 1111

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