Mr. Lorenzo Casati, CEO of EniRepSa Gas Limited in Saudi Arabia will be chairing a panel discussion on development technologies for current exploration and production projects and their significance to the sector globally. KPMG Al Fozan & Al Sadhan Director, Tim Rockell will also be chairing a session on the impact and challenges of the decreasing oil prices and exploration potential for oil & gas in the Middle East. Panelists in this session include Christof Ruhl, Chief Economist, BP and Alain Panhard, Manager, Finance & Corporate Support, South Rub Al-Khali Company Limited (SRAK) SAOGE's newly launched 'Industry meets University' initiative aims at encouraging Saudization by giving local students the opportunity to have an active presence at the exhibition. Under this initiative, students from the most prominent Universities in the region focusing on Oil & Gas and Engineering will be given a tour of the Exhibition, which contains over 250 private and public companies participating this year. Students will be also be given the opportunity to raise questions and present their view of the industry to a number of the major operators and contractors represented during the conference program.

This will be followed by specialists and key decision-makers having direct interaction with the students to provide them with the tools they would require to better understand more about the career opportunities available to them in the Kingdom.

Piero Zipoli, President of SAOGE organisers, IES Srl, said 'We recently launched this forum at our Offshore Mediterranean Conference and found that both industry and the students benefited greatly - so the SAOGE Committee felt that to host a similar forum and tie-in with the Kingdoms Saudization plans would offer equal benefits'.(C) 2009 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)