Published on January 8, 2025

As a company of many firsts, BSP understands the critical role its people play in delivering business results. This also means having highly capable and highly skilled personnel that are resilient to the dynamic industry who are also technical experts in their respective fields.  

“Technical Authorities” (TA) stand as one of BSP's key talent management programme to ensure BSP holds a pool of talents with assessed competence that can be practiced independent of the position in the organisation – meaning that these personnel will be assessed according to established standards in their fields.  

TA Feature 

 

Winner of 3x Shell Global Rig of the Year Awards - Sapura Alliance (2020, 2022) and Petro Vietnam Drilling (2023)

Hammry Haji Ali Ahmad  

Wells Operation Team Lead 

In his team’s efforts to deliver wells for BSP, Hammry’s current day-to-day involves overseeing well operations involving Health, Safety, Security and Environmental (HSSE) assessments in well construction along with its technical aspects, collaborating closely with business partners, subsurface teams, and project teams. 

Hammry’s career journey into a Technical Authority began as a graduate trainee. Today, he has more than 20 years of well engineering experience and dedication in well design and construction with Shell Round 1 and Round 2 well engineering certification. In his development, he also actively pursued advanced training in well engineering and involved in complex well development projects. 

This ultimately led to being nominated for the TA role, followed by an interview assessment process to validate his competencies as BSP’s Technical Authority.  This includes additional responsibilities such as assuring well engineering designs and compliance with technical and safety standards. As a TA Level 2 in well operations, he ensures that any changes and risks are properly identified, managed and documented. This allows for the management of key decisions and provide expert advice to ensure safe and efficient well performance.  

In well engineering, the TA is tasked with effectively reducing operational downtime, enhancing well productivity, without compromising safety.  It doesn’t stop there. Hammry acknowledges the significant responsibility and continuous learning required to maintain the high standards and quality assurance of safety and integrity in maintaining his position as a TA.  

On a broader scale, this expertise strengthens Brunei’s technical capabilities in the oil and gas sector, contributing to its reputation for operational excellence and safety. Hammry also plays his part by taking the opportunity to provide technical mentorship opportunities for coaching young, especially local, engineers. 

“For me, becoming a TA has been both an honor and a challenge; it offers the opportunity to make impactful decisions and contribute to the growth of BSP by ensuring that our standard practices are safe, efficient, and technically sound,” shared Hammry.  

 

Well Delivery team - 2023 SHELL GLOBAL Rig of the Year winner (PVD-V rig)

Yanti Malai Abdullah 

Seismic Acquisition and Processing Team Lead 

Yanti and her team are responsible for ensuring high quality seismic data is safely acquired, processed and delivered within the Exploration space. Seismic data itself requires large amounts of storage and compute power to run advanced algorithms (in the scale of petabytes). Therefore,the seismic delivered needs to be of correct quality, usability, and applicability to be able to support decision making by teams within the production geoscience and exploration space. Operationally, she manages a team of 28 colleagues, managing acquisition & processing projects as well as ensuring BSP’s High Power Compute (HPC) runs smoothly to enable the delivery of these products.  

Yanti has always been passionate about high quality technical delivery and takes pride in ensuring high standard work is delivered. In that spirit, she has also acquired her TA2 Geophysics accreditation for Seismic Interpretation, Quantitative Interpretation, Geohazard and Time-Depth Conversion. Her journey as a TA2 started more than 10 years ago when she attended her first TA review. Since then, Yanti has adapted the learner’s mindset by cultivating her interest and has grown in her expertise. Her TA2 assessment included 3 online exams, 1 written summary and 5 interviews with 2 global Geophysics TA1s to get accredited. She recalls that the process was very challenging but rewarding and worth every moment.  

Yanti with her Mentoring Circle

Being a TA helps her ensure she delivers what is required according to industry standards and procedures. For example, geohazard work requires a specific type of dataset that is usable to do geohazard analysis to avoid risk when planning for a well. In Quantitative Interpretation the seismic data used needs to have gone through proper processes that don’t affect the responses that will be studied which is followed by integrating other subsurface information to support hydrocarbon predictions. 

In her role as a Technical Authority, she provides technical advice and steer on any elements associated with the 4 accreditations mentioned above. As a TA2, she is expected to do more in the QA (Quality Assurance) space, however this does not deter her from spending time working with teams utilizing that as part of QC (Quality Check). She believes that this helps improve her skills as a TA and is the best way to come to a proper understanding and appreciation of what needs assurance. 

This is a unique skillset in Brunei to not only manage but also decipher the data that we have which maximizes our understanding of finding new hydrocarbons while avoiding dangers to ensure that BSP invests in the right opportunities. 

"To future TAs, I highly encourage you to be good at your trade, know your discipline and to focus on your own technical excellence before you can advise others. Always appreciate other disciplines and try to see where you fit in the larger scheme of things with respect to your technical steer,” she shared.  

 

Yanti with colleagues at the Global Geophysics Leadership Network in 2022