11 May 2008
Every two years, the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) holds an International Conference to allow Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) professionals to get together and debate matters relating to health, safety, sustainable development and the environment. This year the Conference was held in Nice on the French Riviera between 15- 18 April in what became one of the largest and most important HSE conferences held by the energy industry to date. The event featured the world-class, record-making coral transplantation programme of Yemen LNG which was perceived by delegates as a “big hit”.


Yemen LNG was an active participant in this Conference and the Company’s resource people were in big demand during the “Knowledge Sharing” session. Yemen LNG’s corporate Health Safety, Social and Environment Manager, Mr. Robert Hirst, presented a paper about the innovative coral transplantation programme which generated a lot of interest in the section on Environmental Management. Unlike the conventional “sit down” format, the presentation on this forum was set up into stands and LCD projectors, in addition to the chance of displaying a colourful poster to attract people to come and learn about this exciting biodiversity project.

This year, 1200 delegates from hundreds of companies around the world attended, including a number of international and national oil & gas companies, service companies, concerned authorities, equipment suppliers, etc.

“I was very surprised at the level of interest in Yemen LNG, because we were competing with about 30 other presenters for “air time” said Robert. “I was supposed to speak for 2 hours but ended up speaking throughout the whole day to many groups of people, including scientists, environmentalists, engineers, managers, etc. They expressed surprise at the work being done to preserve corals in Yemen and wanted to learn more about the innovative techniques we were using” He continued.

Ibrahim Al-Thary, Yemen LNG’s Head of Environment and Kombiz Hashemi, Project Quality HSE Manager also participated actively in the Conference and took part in the knowledge sharing session.

Yemen LNG’s shareholder had an stand at the Conference where photos and video from the actual coral transplantation programme of Yemen LNG in Balhaf were featured.