Saudi Aramco Divers Thrive in Depths

“There is nothing
more enticing,
disenchanting
and enslaving
than the life at sea.”
— Joseph Conrad
2 Saudi Aramco Dimensions

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Into
the
Saudi Aramco divers embody
grace under pressure
d
Written by Mark Kennedy
Photos by Faisal Al-Dossary and courtesy of Fuad Asaad and the Saudi Aramco Photo Unit
e
The Al-Gosaibi 42 lies anchored serenely in the Arabian Gulf, about 3 miles off
the coast of Saudi Arabia. It is calm on the greenish sea today, just a gentle sway
and bob and the occasional slap of waves that, if it weren’t for the undercurrent
of tension on deck, would produce a lulling effect.
Though it might appear calm on the sea, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is calm
e
under the sea. This awareness is firmly embedded into the psyche of all Saudi Aramco
divers. Right now, about 60 feet beneath the surface, a lone diver is inspecting a pipeline.
In that environment, when the bottom of the sea is your jobsite, dangers are everywhere.
Even a task as simple as cutting a fisherman’s net from an offshore platform or a jack-up
p
barge’s legs can turn deadly. This is what Fuad Asaad, one of Saudi Aramco’s senior diving
inspectors with the Marine Underwater Inspection and Repair Unit, was doing when
the current shifted just enough for the net to begin slowly wrapping around him. Had he
not noticed the net undulating hypnotically through the water toward him, he would
have been trapped.
Unlike recreational divers who enjoy the sport for the beauty and peace they experience
underwater, commercial divers (which are the only type of divers Saudi Aramco
employs) are here to work. That means using jackhammers, drills, welding and cutting
torches, and a host of other equipment — all of it underwater. Also unlike recreational divers, who pair up
with another diver (their “buddy”), commercial divers typically dive alone.
So if something goes wrong, he is on his own until help can reach him.
Though help is standing by on the surface, there is always a delay.
On a commercial dive boat you might expect a certain amount of
joking around. But when a diver is in the water, like now, everyone
on deck becomes utterly serious because they all know that anything
can happen down there.
“And when it does, it’s usually quite depressing,” said Phil
Harrison, another of Saudi Aramco’s senior diving inspectors.
“Diving accidents tend to be serious. There is an inherent danger.
No accident is planned, but because you’re underwater as well,
any accident is far more critical and normally ends up
being more serious than the same accident on the
At left, Saudi Aramco contract diver Sultan Al-
Ahmadi climbs aboard the dive boat after a work
dive in the Arabian Gulf this October. At right, an
Aramco diver readies for descent in the Arabian
Gulf near Ras Tanura to inspect a pipeline in 1958.

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surface.” He pauses and sums up the reality, “When
one of us hurts, we all hurt.”
A special unit
The company’s Marine Underwater Inspection
and Repair Unit does exactly what the name
implies. It is the only unit that performs crucial
subsea inspections and repairs to the company’s
extensive underwater infrastructure.
“Diving services are not only important to our
marine operations, they are critical to the whole company,”
said Abdulsalam A. Yousef, manager of Saudi
Aramco’s Marine Department. “Our divers must be
jacks of all trades. They must be proficient in welding,
pipe fitting, cutting and a whole assortment of
other mechanical skills. Because offshore, what you
see above the water is only the tip of the iceberg. We
depend on our divers to make sure that what you see
above the water is standing with no problems under
the water. In our business, if the bottom of the iceberg
is not solid, you have big problems.”
Ahmed Abdullah Al-Kuwaihes, superintendent of
Marine Department’s Tanajib Offshore Operations,
explained, “With oil exploration and producing, you
either have onshore or offshore. In the offshore you
have pipelines covering almost all of the seabed area
in the Gulf. Some of these pipelines have been there
for 40 or 50 years, since the discovery of the Safaniyah
field. All these pipelines require inspection and maintenance
and repair. Only divers can do this job.”
As if maintaining the infrastructure that is already
in place isn’t enough, Saudi Aramco’s massive offshore
expansion projects have created even more jobs for
company divers. To meet the additional requirements, the
number of dive boats in operation was recently increased
from five to seven, representing a 40-percent increase in
operational capacity. “If everybody else expands by 40 percent,
then we need to expand by 40 percent to support it,”
said Harrison.
“With the increase in offshore activities, it has become
a very busy operation here in Tanajib,” said Al-Kuwaihes.
“Tanajib is the heart of offshore activities, and we support
them all. A few years ago we had maybe 8 offshore drilling
rigs at the most. Now there are close to 30 rigs. We are supporting
Manifa field development, Berri field expansion,
Safaniyah field expansion, Qatif field development, Karan
field development — and these are just the projects — in
addition to our day-to-day operations. Sometimes the dock
is so congested with boats you cannot see the sea.”
Sultan Al-Ahmadi prepares for a dive in the Arabian Gulf with the
help of dive supervisor John Kennedy, middle, and Gopal Laku.
The company currently employs approximately 120
divers, and they all work as contract employees. The divers
work 56 days on and 30 days off. “So if there are 120 divers
at present,” said Harrison, “almost half of that number will
be on leave. Every week some divers go out and some divers
come in. There’s a continual rotation.”
Most of the divers are in the Kingdom on what is
known as a Seaman’s visa, or Seaman’s card. Because
of the rules that apply to Seaman’s visas, the divers aren’t
allowed to spend any more time onshore than it takes to go
from the airport to the dive boat. In most cases, that even
means the dock. Once on the boat, that is where they live
and work until they go out on leave.
With all this underwater work, it might seem surprising
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4 Saudi Aramco Dimensions

then that Saudi Aramco doesn’t actually have a
diving unit, as such. It never has. “We do it all
through specialized diving contractors, including
one that has a fully equipped fleet of diving
vessels along with the necessary divers who
are ready to attend to any job, anytime, anywhere
in our operations,” said Al-Kuwaihes.
“In fact, this contractor, Al-Gosaibi Diving and
Marine Services, is considered one of the single
largest diving contractors currently operating
in the world.”
Since the beginning of Aramco’s offshore
operations, for more than 50 years, nearly all
underwater work has been performed by contract
divers. In what is traditionally a boomand-bust
business, hiring
contractors to meet this specialized
need has proven to
be the most efficient and
cost-effective method of
providing critical diving
services. It is a business
model that the entire company
is now embracing.
Khalid M. Otaibi, supervisor
of the Underwater
Inspection and Repair Unit
said, “The company is making
the transition from being
a provider of services to
being a manager of service providers. Right now in Marine,
we mostly provide services. But, for instance, why should we
go and build boats and barges that cost hundreds of millions
and keep maintaining them and keep training captains and
chief engineers It’s too much.”
“The beauty of this model,” said Al-Kuwaihes, “is that
you have the control to increase or decrease your resources
depending on the need.”
Right now the need is intense. And it is intense all over
the world — which is creating a whole series of challenges.
Working down under
Aboard the Al-Gosaibi 42, Asaad said, “Come
look at this.” He leads me into a cabin where
a video monitor shows a pair of gloved hands
moving slowly in murky green water. The diver working
on the pipeline isn’t visible on the screen because what we
are witnessing is live feed from his helmet camera. We see
what he sees.
Crew on a dive vessel lower a
buoy to mark the site underwater
of a retired Saudi Aramco
vessel that was sunk to create
an artificial reef for marine life.
At left, a company commercial
diver plots out the day’s work.
Asaad said, “Every diver
has a hat camera so we can
monitor the divers in the
water all the time. The hat
cameras have made our job
as diving inspectors easier
because now we can instruct the divers straight away on
what they are doing — maybe a diver is doing something
wrong underwater and is unaware of it; we can tell him
immediately, no, don’t open this valve, open that valve. We
are the ones who studied the job, and we know what needs
to be done. But we cannot be in the water all the time.”
Asaad and Harrison are Saudi Aramco’s senior diving
inspectors. It is their job to monitor the work of the contractors
and to ensure that safety precautions are being
taken. “We have very good diving supervisors in the field,”
said Asaad, “but we need to be in contact with them all the
time. If they need materials or equipment, we can arrange
for delivery of parts, or if they have questions we can get
them an answer right away.”
They also screen the resumes of new hires and review any
scopes of work that pertain to underwater jobs. And when a
project begins, they are among the first divers in the water to
evaluate the job as it actually will be underwater. Then, during
the peak of the work being performed, they dive again to
Winter 2008 5

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Saudi Aramco’s Mv Midyan, above,
is one of the company’s diving
support vessels in the Red Sea. At
right are Ahmed Al-Kuwaihes, left,
Marine’s superintendent of Tanajib
Offshore Operations, and Khalid
Otaibi, supervisor of the Underwater
Inspection and Repair Unit.
‘ On any given day,
you can’t predict
what will happen.’
— Senior diving inspector
Fuad Asaad
assess the progress of the job.
Finally, once the job has been
completed, they go back in to
have a general look to make sure
the work conforms to the company’s standards.
They also act as the interface between the contractor
and the company. “We understand diving and we also
understand the language of Aramco, whereas the contractor
doesn’t,” said Asaad. “So our job is to relay messages
both ways. At the same time we have to maintain Saudi
Aramco’s business with the contractor. We have to make
sure that the contractor is efficiently using all the time he
has to perform a job to the best of his ability.”
For both Asaad and Harrison, going from being primarily
divers to being Saudi Aramco’s only two senior
diving inspectors wasn’t an equal trade. It meant taking
on more responsibilities — among them, more training and
a healthy dose of administrative work — but it also meant
less diving. Still, it is the diving that keeps the job fun.
“There is a certain excitement to do the job, whatever
it is,” said Asaad. “There are obstacles in the way. So we
have to find a path through these obstacles and troubleshoot
all the problems. On any given day, you can’t predict what
will happen.”
Harrison added, “It doesn’t matter how many dives you
make, no two dives are exactly the
same. You can dive today and you
can dive tomorrow, in exactly the same
location at exactly the same time of
day to do exactly the same job but the
two dives will never be the same. You’ll
see something else, something new will
swim by, something different will happen.
That’s the thing, it is repetitive,
but it’s not identical.”
Harrison illustrated this point by
telling me about when he was a diving
contractor, and a fellow diver discovered
an ancient Greek amphora — a narrownecked
jar or vase — on the seafloor
off Yanbu‘. Another of his coworkers
found an old scimitar
— a traditional Arab saber —
in a fishing net that had become
wrapped up in the propeller of
a company boat. Yet another
co-worker was performing a
routine pipeline inspection when
he came across an Iraqi mine on
the seafloor not two feet away
from the pipeline. “Those mines
float until they sink,” Harrison
said. “This one sank and came
to rest right next to the pipeline. It was just as you’d imagine.
A big metal ball with little antennae sticking out of it.”
Asaad said, “You see There’s no way to get bored.”
A conflict of time
Time in this occupation is both a premium and a
curse. A diver can only work underwater for so
long before he must resurface. Asaad explained
that a commercial diver has to work fast but carefully. If he
stirs up the sediment on the seabed he will risk working in
near zero-visibility conditions. If he drops a bolt, it will sink
into the muck and be gone. At that point, said Asaad, even
if he found the bolt, “the particles from the sand and silt
will get into the threads of the bolt and the nut will not
seat. Working underwater can be a very delicate operation.”
And, with only one diver working at a time, it is a seemingly
inefficient operation. “But,” said Harrison, “that’s the
only way you can work. You do what you can. And then
you come out and you pass the tools to the next guy. It’s
not like a surface operation where you can flood a job with
extra people. With diving, nine times out of (cont. on page 9)
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ROVs:
Divers of a
different kind
InJames Cameron’s 1997 Academy Award
winning film, Titanic, you might remember
the eerie and haunting footage of the actual
Titanic lying on the seabed 12,000 feet beneath
the surface of the North Atlantic. That footage was shot
using a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV).
ROVs are robotic vehicles that are designed to perform
a variety of functions underwater. They can weigh
several tons out of the water but can attain neutral buoyancy
in the water. They are tethered to a dive boat on the
surface (or other suitably equipped vessel) by a bundle of
electrical, hydraulic and communications cables called an
umbilical cord. Like a cross between a remote-controlled
plane and a video game, they are “flown” by an operator
on the support vessel. The operator will monitor a video
screen that shows what the ROV is “seeing,” and uses an
assortment of levers and buttons to control the ROV and
its various equipment in order to perform tasks that are
either impossible or cost-prohibitive for divers to do.
ROVs can be configured with different types of equipment
depending on the work each will be required to
perform. Like the one used to shoot the scenes for the
movie Titanic, most ROVs are equipped with cameras
that take still photos or record video footage (or shoot
live footage and then send those video images back to
the support vessel). Data-recording sensors can also be
employed. ROVs can come with different types of tools
attached to hydraulic arms for performing tasks such as
cutting, drilling, measuring, assembling and retrieving.
Some ROVs are even outfitted with magnetometers and
sonar for performing subsea surveys.
Though ROV technology was originally developed
in the 1960s by the U.S. Navy for performing deep-sea
rescues and recovering objects from the seafloor, ROVs
have proven particularly useful in offshore oil-and-gas
applications. So useful, in fact, from exploration efforts
through the production phase, that most of the funding
used for improving ROV technology has come from the
oil-and-gas industry.
ROVs are perfect for doing work beyond the limits of
commercial divers. They are used both in the initial construction
of a sub-sea infrastructure and its subsequent
repair and maintenance. Saudi Aramco uses ROVs for
work that ranges from drill-rig support to inspection and
maintenance of pipelines and subsea structures and platforms
to connecting
flowlines and operating
and maintaining
valves and other
moving parts on
subsea manifolds.
When an underwater
job is in the
planning stage, several
factors are considered
when determining
whether to
Fuad Asaad displays one of the company’s
compact but powerful ROVs.
use an ROV or to
send in a diver, such as:
• TYPE OF WORK TO BE PERFORMED (i.e. construction,
inspection, surveillance or seabed survey): A diver can
manage complicated construction tasks such as underwater
cutting, burning and welding, whereas ROVs
are better suited to more simple tasks such as seabed
cable laying/trenching/burial.
• WORK DURATION: A diver has a maximum endurance
time that is also related to water depth (the deeper the
water, the shorter the dive time). An ROV has no limit
to its endurance.
• ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS (i.e. depth of water,
tidal flow, water quality): Where the water depth is a
limiting factor for a diver due to his need for decompression,
an ROV has a much deeper depth capability.
An ROV can work in much stronger tidal conditions
than a diver can. An ROV can also work in contaminated
water conditions without fear of injury, but a
diver would have to use expensive contamination suits
and equipment that might not be readily available.
• JOB SITE ACCESSIBILITY (i.e. accessible work site or
restricted access work site): The job/work site access is
an important consideration. A diver can work in confined
spaces more easily than an ROV because he can
think for himself and work around complex objects.
Where an ROV can go is limited by its size.
• UNDERWATER VISIBILITY (i.e. good or bad/near or far):
A diver is limited by the amount of underwater visibility,
but an ROV can be fitted with sonar and cameras
so it can effectively “see” both close-up and at long
range using a sonar image well outside the visual range
of a diver. ■
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Saudi Aramco marine
diving inspector
living his
boyhood dream
Written by Lori Olson White
DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia — Fuad
A. Asaad is in love. He’s been in
love since he was a little boy living
on the shores of the Red Sea in Jeddah.
“I love the sea,” says Asaad, senior diving
inspector in Saudi Aramco’s Marine Underwater
Inspection and Repair Unit. “When I
was young, I would pass by the sea on my
way to school every morning. I’d see divers
in our area, and they were like astronauts.
I’d follow them into the water until I ran out
of breath.”
Today, Asaad is one of those divers he
used to follow into the sea. And it is a
dream come true.
“From the time I was small and went snorkeling with
my father, I dreamed of being a diver,” Asaad admits.
The dream started to become real one day when, on the
way home from high school, Asaad stopped at a local diving
shop just for information. His timing was impeccable, and
before the young man knew exactly what was happening,
the dive instructor had signed him up for lessons and supplied
him with all the necessary equipment.
Asaad remembers telling his mother about his good
fortune.
“I came home and my mother said, ‘What are you
doing” chuckles Asaad, smiling. “I told her I would start
diving with the course or without it, but I was going to
start diving!”
And he hasn’t slowed down since.
“I have always dived as much as I can,” he says. “I’ve
dived the whole Red Sea, north to south. I’ve taken additional
training on different vessels in different places as
much as I can.”
Six years after his first dive, Asaad became a certified
recreational dive instructor, and in 1993 the boy who loved
the sea graduated from King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah
with a degree in marine biology.
From 1990 until 1997, as a diving instructor, Asaad
shared his passion for the sea and for the camaraderie of
diving with others.
During that time, Asaad’s father took him aside.
“My father told me I could be a professional diver, dive
anywhere in the world and get paid,” recalls Asaad fondly.
The first step toward that goal was to become a commercial
diver.
Whereas recreational divers are trained to use underwater
equipment for enjoyment, commercial divers are trained to
actually work underwater, to operate machinery and tools,
to recognize working hazards and deal with decompression
and chambers.
“It’s like driving a car versus driving a bus,” explains
Asaad. “Every bus driver can drive a car, but not ever car
driver can drive a trolley. Not every recreational diver can
dive commercially, but all commercial divers can be recreational
divers.”
“Commercial diving is a step up,” he adds. “It requires
more training and skill.”
In 1997, Asaad joined Saudi Aramco and became a
member of the first generation of Saudi employees training
to become commercial divers. His career path with the
company found Asaad in the classroom and underwater
throughout the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia during
an intense three-year Professional Development Program
(PDP) in diving.
“My training included a lot of practice on a lot of different
dive boats,” Asaad says, explaining that each boat differs
depending on its purpose — inspection, repair or maintenance
— as well as its suitability for either deep or shallow
water.
Asaad received most of his diver training working for
Saudi Aramco, but he also received specialized commercial
instruction in Scotland in the United Kingdom over a threeyear
period. In 2001, he earned the title of senior diving
inspector. Ever eager to learn new skills, Asaad went on to
attain the following certificates: Underwater Welding, Diving
Medic Technician, Underwater NDT Inspector, ROV Pilot,
ROV Technician Engineer 1, ROV Technician Engineer 2
(which makes him qualified to operate 7 different ROVs)
and Diving Medic.
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8 Saudi Aramco Dimensions

Opposite, top left: Fuad Asaad returns to his dive vessel after a
work dive in the Arabian Gulf. Above: Asaad and John Kennedy,
the contractor diving supervisor, plan dive work for the day.
Inset below: An Aramco diver works on the Trans-Arabian
Pipeline (Tapline) at its Sidon, Lebanon, terminal, 1952.
All those professional certifications make Asaad the first
and only Saudi diver in the company, and in the Kingdom,
with that level of training. He is currently working toward
a diving supervisor certificate granted by the International
Marine Contractor’s Association (IMCA), the governing
body of commercial diving.
Since becoming a commercial diver in 1997, Asaad has
logged countless hours underwater, so many that he is
already on his second log book.
On any given day, Asaad might be inspecting an offshore
platform, clearing the way for a rig barge, repairing
an underwater pipeline or monitoring work on a pier.
“It is an enjoyable job,” he says with a smile. “I keep
moving all the time. I learn something
new every day, and every day I must
be prepared to learn more — I
am like an open sponge to grab
anything that comes along.”
“I think of my father
sometimes,” Asaad adds. “I
remember what he told me,
and I know he was
right. I am living
that dream.” ■
(cont. from page 6)
ten there is one diver in the water
working on his own.”
A commercial diver’s time underwater is not limited
by a supply of air. On the contrary, commercial divers
have three independent sources of air. One continuous
source of air is supplied directly from a compressor on
the dive boat through an “umbilical cord” (called this
because, like an umbilical cord in a mother’s womb,
it provides everything the diver needs: air, communications
and a tangible lifeline to the surface). Another
source of air comes from a small tank the divers carry
for emergency use. The “source of last resort” is air
supplied by the stand-by diver summoned to rescue a
diver who is in trouble.
“Because we have three independent sources of air
we don’t think about running out of air,” Asaad said.
“What we think about is bottom time.”
When a diver reaches the depth at which he will be
working, his body comes under a certain amount of
pressure. The deeper he goes, the more pressure he
will experience. His body begins absorbing nitrogen
and oxygen from the air he is breathing. The oxygen
is released harmlessly from the body as CO2. But the
nitrogen remains pressurized in the body as long as
the diver remains at that depth.
As the diver begins to surface, the pressure on his
body is gradually lessened, and the nitrogen begins to
be released. Divers must make “decompression stops”
on their way to the surface so the nitrogen can be
released gradually. If the nitrogen is released too quickly
it can cause decompression sickness, a condition commonly
referred as “the bends.”
“There are two types of decompression sickness,”
Harrison said. “Type 1 and type 2. Type 1 is the least
serious of the two and is called ‘pain only’ decompression
sickness. That’s where you get the release of gasses
from your body tissues and they collect around the joint
areas creating a lot of pain — you feel as though your
joints are being popped out.
“Type 2 is central nervous system decompression
sickness, which basically means you’ve got gas bubbles
coming out of solution in your nervous system — your
spinal cord, your brain, your brain stem — and under
those conditions you don’t feel pain. What you get is
loss of sensation, paralysis, pins and needles, which are
indications of damage being done to your spinal cord
or your brain. So you can actually die in the worst
cases. You can suffocate because pressure in your brain
or spinal cord is pushing on the part that tells you to
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‘The thing to remember is
we’re air-breathing mammals.
If we were meant to be diving
underwater, we’d have gills
and we’d be called fish.’
— Senior dive inspector
Phil Harrison
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“
breathe. It’s very serious. Divers can be left paralyzed for life
with type 2 decompression sickness. And the onset of the
symptoms is very quick and frightening.”
A series of preventive tables developed by the U.S. and
British navies provide recommendations for how long a diver
can remain at any given depth, along with corresponding
decompression times.
“Decompression is a calculated part of our operation,”
said Asaad. “Before we dive, we know the depth to which
we are diving and we plan the time we will remain at that
depth. We have to agree on the time with the diving supervisor.
But even when a diver is in the water, the supervisor
can extend a diver’s bottom time for a job that isn’t quite
finished. Sometimes a diver can ask to be extended, say for
another five minutes, if he is close to finishing a job. And
the supervisor will have to recalculate the decompression
tables on the surface. And he will say OK, your decompression
stop will be for this length of time at this depth.”
Ocean mammals don’t get the bends
The thing to remember is we’re air-breathing mammals,”
said Harrison. “If we were meant to be diving
underwater we’d have gills and we’d be called
fish. All the other air-breathing mammals that dive are all
Marine Department divers work in an underwater wonderworld.
Above, a company recreational diver takes photos in the colorful
splendor of the Red Sea.
breath-holding mammals: seals, dolphins, whales. They don’t
have the problem with the bends because they’re holding
their breath when they’re diving. There’s no chance of
decompression sickness because they haven’t been breathing
compressed air under pressure to absorb into their bodies.
It’s when you breathe compressed gasses underwater, under
pressure, that you saturate your body with too much gas.
And then if you don’t return to the surface in a controlled
fashion, that gas comes out of solution too quickly causing
big problems.”
As a precaution, every dive boat is equipped with a
hyperbaric chamber that can treat decompression sickness.
Hyperbaric chambers, also known as recompression chambers,
work by putting the diver’s body back under the same
amount of pressure it was under during the dive. The pressure
can then be lowered gradually, allowing the nitrogen
to be released in a controlled manner. If there are complications,
a portable recompression unit called a TUP (for
Transfer Under Pressure) can be used to transport the diver
to a recompression chamber in Tanajib that is large enough
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10 Saudi Aramco Dimensions

to stand up and walk around in.
TUPs are about the size of a
large coffin — not good for
divers prone to claustrophobia,
or fear of being trapped in tight,
enclosed spaces. Considering that
it can take five or six hours to
treat decompression sickness,
the large recompression chamber,
ideally, is where you want to be.
Remarkably, out of 6,030 total
dives made in 2007, the company’s
recompression chambers
were only used twice. According
to Al-Gosaibi Diving and Marine
Services’ 2007 Annual Diving
Safety Statistics Report, that is
an incident rate of 0.03 percent.
Harrison said, “We maintain
pretty high standards here. No
one else can put forward figures
like these.”
The right stuff
It takes a certain combination of qualities to be a good
commercial diver — the right stuff, you might say.
“You have to be crazy to be a diver, but you have to
be a real maniac to be a commercial diver,” goes the saying.
That’s the cliché, but like all clichés, there is an element of
truth to it.
Asaad told me about a friend of his, a retired engineer
named John Anderson who said that divers perform miracles
because they can break the unbreakable and fix the unfixable.
“It’s true” said Asaad. “They can take apart anything
and reconfigure anything underwater. Sometimes you can’t
believe what one diver can do in the water.”
“With commercial diving,” Harrison said, “there’s usually
only one diver working in the water. So, he’s got to be good
at working on his own. He’s got to be able to work blind
because sometimes there’s no visibility at all and everything
has to be done by touch. He’s got to be completely multidexterous.
His dexterity must be both visual and non-visual.
He’s got to be able to do everything with either hand. He’s
got to be mentally dexterous in order to work things out in
the water, because the field of view is reduced. He’s got to
be an active decision-maker. It’s no good being indecisive.”
It is perhaps this quality, the ability to make quick, correct
decisions under pressure that can most profoundly impact the
outcome of a job — especially when the situation goes bad.
A company diver gathers marine data in the Arabian
Gulf in 2005.
Right now, the diver beneath
the Al-Gosaibi 42 has been
working on the pipeline for
about 30 minutes. A stand-by
diver is on deck holding his diving
helmet in his hands, ready
to jump in at a moment’s notice.
The diving supervisor is in direct
communication with the diver
and is closely monitoring his
time underwater.
Yet this was exactly the scene
many years ago when Harrison
was a diving supervisor and one
of his divers was working down
on the seabed. On that particular
day, however, the diver was
doing a job that required the
use of a Broco underwater cutting
torch. There was what is
referred to as an O2 build-up,
where the oxygen used to help burn the ultrathermic cutting
rod collects in a pocket and then ignites all at once. There
was an explosion and the force of it separated the diver’s
helmet from his suit. Water began rushing into the helmet.
“In that moment it was 50/50 whether the diver was
going to survive,” Harrison recalled. “He was drowning
in 120 feet of water and we couldn’t physically jump the
stand-by quickly enough to help him on the bottom. The
stand-by is dressed but doesn’t have his diving helmet on,
breathing air from it. His helmet is in his arms.”
Harrison began pulling on the umbilical cord for all
he was worth. By the time the stand-by was ready to go,
Harrison already had the diver back to 60 feet just by hauling
him up. “Those 60 feet took no more than 60 seconds of
hauling him up,” Harrison said. “It was the longest 60 seconds
I’ve had to experience. I was the supervisor and I could
hear a man drowning and there was nothing I could do other
than keep hauling him up. I was shattered. But luckily it all
turned out great. We got him into the boat, he spat some
water out and we then treated him in a recompression chamber.
But those instances, that’s the worst thing about diving.”
All in a day’s work
After an hour, it is time for the diver to return to
the Al-Gosaibi 42. He makes the appropriate
decompression stop and then he is safely back
aboard, dripping seawater onto the deck. The next diver on
the team has suited up and is now on his way to the bottom
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to continue the job. This is
how it will go until the end
of the shift, when the boat
heads for home.
At Saudi Aramco, a dive
team consists of 10 divers plus
their “tenders” (the person who
helps the diver into his diving
suit and then “tends” to the safe
handling of the umbilical cord
during the dive). The team follows
a set protocol. Each diver
makes one dive per day on a
rotating shift so that the first
one to dive today will be the
second to dive tomorrow, and
so on. The only team members
who aren’t in the rotation are
the diving supervisor and the
diving medic.
The challenge lately has been recruiting and retaining
enough divers to sustain the number of teams the company
needs to deploy on a daily basis. The recent run of strong oil
prices prompted other companies and governments to invest
in the technology and infrastructure projects that will allow
them to bring more of their petroleum products to eager
customers. A lot of that work is offshore, resulting in a
huge demand for commercial divers.
“We’re having to compete for everything related to the
offshore business,” said Al-Kuwaihes. “Divers, manpower,
commodities, equipment, spare parts, boats, you name it.
Anything you need for offshore, there is a very high demand
for it in the world market. A very high demand.”
Nowadays, a commercial diver can get a job anywhere
in the world. And the going rate for commercial divers has
increased fourfold in the past three years. Now that commercial
diving is suddenly such an in-demand profession, it is
not surprising then that commercial diving schools around
the world are at maximum capacity for the next seven to
eight months.
So how does Saudi Aramco cope with this dilemma
One way is through Saudization.
“About four years ago we had something like 1,000 contractor
employees working in the Marine Department,” said
Al-Kuwaihes. “Had you had asked me how many Saudis
were working for our contractors,
I would have said zero.
None. And as we speak now, we
probably have somewhere near
300 Saudi contract employees.
This is a result of the Saudization
program.”
The company hopes to build
on this success to keep up with
the need for commercial divers.
So far, some important milestones
have been achieved.
Until just recently, Asaad and
Harrison were the only divers
actually employed as direct hires
by Saudi Aramco. In a move to
further Saudize and proactively
manage succession planning, the
company hired two young but
experienced Saudi commercial
divers. This was not as easy as one might think. “Commercial
diving is a relatively unknown profession in Saudi
Arabia,” Asaad said. In fact, there are fewer than 20 Saudi
commercial divers in the world — only 12 are active — and
that includes the ones who are currently in training. These
two new commercial divers, Eyad Al-Hajji and Ayman
Buhlaiga, will embark on a three-year (or longer) training
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From top: Senior diving inspector Phil Harrison explains a recompression
transfer module for divers suffering from “the bends.”
Asaad shows the inside of a larger recompression chamber.
A Saudi Aramco dive crew gathers for a photo opportunity.
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12 Saudi Aramco Dimensions

“
course and be mentored by Asaad and Harrison to eventually
become their replacements.
Since most of Saudi Aramco’s commercial divers are
contract employees, a lot of the burden to hire Saudis
falls on the contractor company, Al-Gosaibi Diving and
Marine Services.
“The base contract with Al-Gosaibi is one of the longest
contracts that Marine awards,” said Harrison. “It’s seven
years plus two years of extensions. So we’re talking nine
years. That is a big commitment from Saudi Aramco to a
contractor for what Saudi Aramco considers a very important
field of works underwater. It’s not awarded lightly.”
The stable and productive relationship that the company
has created with the contractor has spurred a new development
in the effort to hire more Saudis as commercial divers.
Al-Gosaibi has instituted a program whereby a Saudi recreational
diver who meets the qualifications will be given the
opportunity to go to a diving school of his choice. Then,
when the diver successfully completes the program, Al-
Gosaibi will refund the entire cost to the diver and put
him to work.
You can’t learn it overnight
Commercial diving is not something a person can
learn overnight or in a short period of time,” said
Asaad. “It takes a lot of training. Normally people
don’t go through commercial diving programs on their own
because it’s expensive. But our contractor has taken the initiative
to recruit and train Saudis and is paying for the training
of those who are serious and committed. Right now we
have five Saudis who are now commercial divers working
for Saudi Aramco through our contractor. Plus there are
about three or four who are receiving their training right
now in South Africa.”
According to Al-Kuwaihes, the Saudization program is
a real blessing, and not just for the Marine Department.
“It has had so many benefits and advantages. It has added
value to the company, the society, to the government and to
the local economy. It has provided opportunities for numerous
Saudis to be trained, nurtured and developed so they
can support their families. The benefits are far-reaching.”
“I have a vision for the diving program,” said Yousef.
“I would like to see the number of Saudi commercial divers
increased even more. And I hope to one day see a commercial
diving institute in the Kingdom. I believe that once the
new generation of Saudis is exposed to commercial diving,
they will like it. Being a commercial diver for Saudi Aramco
is a very technical, demanding and key job with the company.
Our divers are our hidden soldiers. They’re proud
of what they’re doing, the company is proud of what they
are doing and I am proud of what they are doing.”
Being a commercial diver isn’t for everyone, though. As
Asaad told me, “The decision whether to continue diving
or not comes with the first jump into the water.”
For Asaad and Harrison it has been a rewarding profession.
Not everyone gets to show up for work and do the
one thing they would probably pay someone else for the
opportunity to do. More rewarding still is being able to
pass on their considerable knowledge and experience to
Eyad and Ayman, the next generation of Saudi Aramco’s
diving inspectors. “I’ve been privileged to have the company
make a substantial investment in me in terms of education,
training and experience,” Asaad said. “And now it’s my
chance to pass it on to the next generation.”
There is a road sign on the way to Tanajib that says:
Welcome to Tanajib and Safaniyah, the Home of Teamwork.
As a commercial diver for Saudi Aramco, you are
part of a team. But beyond that, you are part of something
that transcends your 10-member team. You become part of
a larger community, a fraternity of professionals who have
your back at all times.
“I’ve worked all over the country,” Asaad said. “But
here you really can feel the teamwork. Everyone works as a
team member. Everyone supports one another. So if you are
struggling with something, someone is always there to help.
It is the best working environment I’ve been in.” ■
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