Nadhmi Al-Nasr…Chemical engineer, who managed Ghawar, developed Shaybah to reshape Future in NEOM

Once Upon a time, Qatif has been peacefully calm in its oases when Nazmi Al-Nasr released his first cry, to see the light in one of the most calm and peaceful governorates of the Eastern Province in Saudi Arabia.

Qatif environment contributed to the refinement of Nazmi Al-Nasr’s personality. This man was one of the governorate’s most loyal sons, and is similar to the terrain of his plain region located on the bank of the Arabian Gulf, as an ancient coastal oasis rich in oil, dates, fruits and fish, as well as being known for its pearl trade and extraction. It is an authentic area, and its son is the same as an authentic man.

From that quiet spot in the east of the Kingdom, Nazmi Al-Nasr came to be the executive director of the NEOM project, and he was the first to be assigned to the task of President of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology from outside the academic structure.

Al-Nasr has spent more than four decades of his service working with international engineering and consulting firms in the United States, Britain, the Netherlands, and Japan, in addition to Saudi Arabia. He emerged in all its practical stations, especially in the oil fields such as Ghawar, Safaniyah and Shaybah.

The cheerful Nazmi Al-Nasr was awarded a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering in 1978 from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Dhahran. As soon as he graduated, he joined Saudi Aramco, just like the people of the region, including his father, who was a colleague of the former Minister of Petroleum, Engineer Ali Al-Naimi.

Al-Nasr worked for the first three years of his career in engineering services, and in 1981, he began working on implementing the main gas network in the Kingdom, a program aimed at feeding the petrochemical industries in the two industrial cities in Jubail and Yanbu. In 1986 he was promoted to a project manager responsible for all the capital programs in Ghawar oilfield. In 1991, he was appointed as a manager of a huge and ambitious program to increase the production of crude oil in the Ghawar field, which contributed to ensuring the Kingdom’s ability to close the output gap caused by the loss of production from Iraq and Kuwait during the first Gulf War. This project was fully completed and production started in 1993.

Al-Nasr was promoted to be the director of oil and gas pipeline projects in Saudi Aramco, and in 1995 he was appointed director of the Shaybah field development program, a giant project from which production began in mid-1998. This project has a story that Minister Al-Naimi quotes in his book (Out of the Desert: My Journey From Nomadic Bedouin to the Heart of Global Oil), which indicates his ability to implement the project in a record time less than estimated, in addition to saving the company billions of dollars that would have been spent if the implementation of the giant project had been prolonged.

Despite his great well-known modesty, Al-Nasr has a firm and serious personality. Nabeel Almojil, who is one of those who accompanied him at work and outside it through tweets on his Twitter account, says that Al-Nasr is a firm leader, working for 25 hours, a metaphor that all his time is dedicated to work, his colleagues call him (the bulldozer), that giant machine that razes mountains and digs the earth. Here it must be noted that although the nickname that is characterized by it makes you feel intense and strong at first glance, he is modest and funny. Almojil indicates that Nadhmi is the type that is used in the concept of management, operations management, where he invests his talent in managing people to bring out the best in them.

After completing the development of Shaybah project, he moved to the General Planning Department as Director of the Long-Term Planning Department, where he became responsible for preparing Aramco’s strategies and business plans. In May 2003, he took the position of Managing Director of the Saudi Petroleum Overseas Company Ltd., and in the following year, he became the Executive Director of Residential Neighborhood Services. In 2006, he was appointed Vice President of Engineering Services.

Nadhmi Al-Nasr is facing one of the most important and most prominent challenges he has ever known in his life. He is now running a project concerned with creating a new form of the future, not only in Saudi Arabia but also all over the world through the mission entrusted to him in the city of dreams and dreamers, the NEOM project, where he leads several teams that work day and night in the far northwest of the Kingdom.

NEOM may be described as the first company in the world that includes different ethnicities, as there are more than 70 nationalities and different religions. This mixture contributed to creating a kind of human coexistence and harmony towards realizing the dream, on the eastern bank of the Red Sea under the management of Nadhmi Al-Nasr.

Some of those whom “Maaal” spoke with from the employees of the future city (NEOM) indicated that Nadhmi Al-Nasr is like Grandfather, as he seeks with his team in NEOM management to enable employees to obtain the best professional work environment that is not limited to men, as women have been able to obtain opportunities of unprecedented work and assume leadership positions in the city of the future, which attracted talents from all countries of the world. This is inferred by its ability to develop the local community, as it has sent some of the people of the region to obtain a variety of sciences that meet the requirements of NEOM, as well as training and educating rural women from the region and employed them in the company.

They also cite Mr. Nadhmi’s keenness to communicate with people who want to leave the company, as he takes time to dine with them, call them or contact with in person.

Al-Nasr is described as passionate about Neom, and he is one of the early adopters of work, as he begins his work at 5:00 AM, and is known among the workers there as the inspiring father, who lives two personalities, the firm leader who doesn’t fear the blame of a blamer and the compassionate man as well.

Nadhmi Al-Nasr, who does not hide his Shiites, knows for certain that “Allah’s hand is with the group,” and does not deny the Sunnis’ Sunnah. Therefore, this man is almost one of the most prominent contemporary Shiites who prayed the congregational prayer behind a Sunni imam from the people of Qassim in particular, and this is one of the most important secrets of his complete belief in the necessity of teamwork with all those who oppose him in terms of nationality, religion and sect.