Geosciences Trip: Hafr Al-Batin – Enjoy the splendid nature of Saudi Arabia

Thursday morning, 28^th January 2016, Geosciences department held a trip to Hafar Al-Batin. The participants are all students which took geophysics exploration course for graduate student and senior project in undergraduate class. They have to attend this trip because it is related to its course which they took. In total, 25 students from both undergraduate and graduate were participating in this trip. They came from various nationality such as Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and also Saudi Arabia. From Indonesian, there are 5 people, Bagus, Hanif, Ryan, Latif from geophysics; Dipta, and Andi from geology; then Mas Hilal from Electrical Engineering department.

This trip was organized by Geosciences KFUPM and supported by ARGAS (seismic acquisition service company) and SAUDI ARAMCO (Saudi Arabia’s national oil company). They invited us to visit their field near Hafr Al Batin town and watched their seismic acquisition project there. The main purpose of this trip is to improve our knowledge in acquisition seismic data. As a geologist, we had to know about this job in specific to maintain geophysical related-job. In contrast, for geophysics this trip related to their study.

The distance between Hafr Al Batin from our lovely campus. We reached our hotel approximately after 5 hours drove from our campus in Dhahran.

We went from campus on Thursday at 12.00 pm. We gathered in Building 1 and went together using KFUPM bus. Our supervisor during this trip is Dr. Abdullatif A. Alshuhail and Dr. Ismail Kaka from Geosciences Department. They are well-known geophysicist which have a lot of experiences both in industry and academic. We stayed for 3 days on this trip, 2 days for reach the basecamp and one day for visit to Hafar Al-Batin field. During this fieldwork, we slept in an apartment named the Boudl resort and hotel which is located in center of Hafr Al Batin town.

The situation in the bus before we left to Hafr Al Batin. In this photo, in the left mas Hilal was chatting with his fellow from Chinese (Mr. I-don’t-know-his-name), whilst in the right mas Bagus was thinking about his future and mas Hanif was talking with his friend (mas Dipta)

The lobby of Boudl hotel is incredible. Mas Hilal and Dipta was talking about their opinions during this trip.

Dinner at McD close to the Boudl Resort and Hotel. We met with two Saudi guys which very hilarious and kind to us (on the far left). We ordered a small portion of chickens with cola and it cost less than 100 SAR.

The trip started on Friday morning and went to the field after taking breakfast. The temperature was low, approximately less than 0 degree Celsius and windy in the outside. They were waiting for us when we reached the basecamp. They were welcoming us to visit their camp. The first explanations come from HSE department. They explained about health, safety, and environment should be followed by us during this trip. They emphasize that anyone who entered this area may use safety boot, helmet, and glass. If they do not follow this regulation, they cannot get access to enter this area. After we finished with the HSE skills, we moved into the navigation room to watch their daily job. This navigation room had a big task to navigate and locate the position of each geophone in their working area. They worked together with geology and geophysics to relocate the geophone in its place based on geoscience knowledge and match with the current situation in the field during acquisition data due to some noises from vehicle vibration, topography contrast, and powerline cables.

ARGAS basecamp in the field. It looks like lovely place to stay during the fieldwork.

Explanation of geophone position by Mr. Gunawan from ARGAS. By the way, he is Indonesian. He pursued his bachelor degree in Geodesy department at ITB, Indonesia.

After praying Jum’at, we followed them to the real field acquisition. In this part, we can see their work in the last 5 months. They divided survey area into 5 blocks, but so far, they finished 4 blocks. Now, they focus in the last block close to the border with Kuwait. For the last block, they expect to finish within 2 months because the due date for this project will expire on March 2016. This field work highly depends on skill and experience from their workers. If they recruit an expert, they will take benefit from it. However, if they hire a freshman to do this job, they might be in a huge risk.

The geophone was cleaned from dust to make sure their geophone is still working well.

The company-man was explaining about seismic which is most likely related to acquisition data.

This is how we eat our lunch during the fieldwork. The food was provided by ARGAS.

The ARGAS-man was telling us how to make this tool (geophone) works and how do they acquire data using it.

Saturday morning, we packed our stuff then went back to Dhahran. That was awesome trip. We have learned many things about geosciences especially in geophysics skills, and the most important thing is we watched how to do a 3D seismic survey.

Our last dinner before we came back to Dhahran. Anyway, the cuisine for dinner was common in Saudi Arabia, they called it as khabsa with chicken (chicken khabsa). This is a tradional dish in the Middle East, not only in Saudi Arabia.

The group photo of the company-men with KFUPM team member.

For geoscientists who want to join us in the College of Petroleum Engineering and Geosciences, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (CPG-KFUPM), we would like to inform you that KFUPM is the leading university in the Middle East in the sense of earth sciences (QS University Rankings: Arab Region 2015). We would like to welcome you as a new student on our beloved campus.

Stay tune in our blog, see you on our next journey.

Aviandy Widya Ismanto