Ali Kamakhi is sure about wanting a career in oil. His first job involved telling a Saudi oil company where to drill to strike black gold. Now he’s evolving his expertise and looking to start a consulting firm for the oil and gas sector.
Ali, 30, grew up in Saudi Arabia and then moved to Lebanon to study Geology and Earth Sciences at American University, Beirut. The biggest employers in the region are oil companies so naturally the brightest graduates wanted to work in such firms.
Ali was quickly snapped up as an explorationist for Saudi Aramco Oil based in Dhahran which is near the Gulf, where the Saudi Arabia's oil wells are.
His daily job involved telling the company what locations to drill for oil in. This was quite exciting because of the huge level of skill involved in making these calculations. “I would go on a map and tell the company why they should spend $10 million dollars drilling in a place”, said Ali.
Was Ali lucky in striking black gold all the time? “In reality, I was only lucky about two out of ten times. In fact having a 20 per cent success rate is considered on the high end of the scale worldwide. Big companies know that they can drill eight wells and waste $80 million dollars because when they strike one well with oil, they will generate billions in dollars.
Although Ali enjoyed his job very much, the problem was that he began to get too specialized in locating oil and felt he was losing the vision with which he went into the job - to understand how the company made money and how to serve clients better.
Ali’s dream is to start his own business and going deeper into the science of oil exploration wasn’t going to help him do that. He decided to join the Australia Graduate Management School (AGSM) MBA programme in 2012 to gain that business perspective that he was lacking.
He said, “I lost focus of the business perspective and I thought that was dangerous for my career. For me, the MBA was the best way to step back and look at the bigger picture.”
Ali said that the MBA has allowed him to realise the resources that he has and how best to utilize them. “For instance, I knew how to locate oil but I didn’t know how to turn that knowledge into a standard that a company can use or how to make it a standard in the industry.”
“All of these things and more, I wasn’t aware of before I joined the MBA and had my perspective refined”, said Ali.
On the AGSM MBA, Ali is focusing on marketing. He wants to understand customer behaviour and be able to sell services to them. He chose to study at AGSM because of its global brand. After observing the trend of the global economy shifting from West to East, Ali wanted to go East but in an English-speaking country.
He feels his decision was a “great one”. “The best thing about AGSM has been the great cohort with brilliant people. I’ve never spent so much time in a room where 40 brilliant minds surround me and influence my thinking”, said Ali.
Ali plans to start his own consultancy for oil and gas companies who want to operate in the Middle East when he graduates.
Till then, he leaves us with some home truths about that controversial subject: oil. “The earth is over four billion year years old and oil is one of its most precious resources. Oil makes the world go round but we take it for granted.
"Everyone says online business is the thing now but it if you think about it without oil this wouldn’t exist. No electricity for research and development or to power computers. No power to move goods around or even to produce food!”
Read more stories about students, alumni and programmes at Australia Graduate Management School, here
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