BASRA, Iraq (AP) – It’s almost dawn and Zainab Amjad has been working on an oil rig in southern Iraq all night. She lowers a sensor in the black depths of a well until sonar waves detect the presence of the crude oil that fuels her country’s economy.
Elsewhere in the oil-rich province of Basra, Ayat Rawthan oversees the assembly of large drill pipes. It will penetrate the earth and send important data about rock formations to screens a few meters away that it will decipher.
The women, both 24, are just a handful who have avoided the tedious office work commonly handed over to female petroleum engineers in Iraq. Instead, they chose to become pioneers in the country’s oil industry and wear hard hats to tackle the grueling work on rig sites.
They are part of a new generation of talented Iraqi women who are testing the boundaries of their conservative communities. Their determination to find work in a historically male-dominated industry is a striking example of the way in which a burgeoning youth population is increasingly at odds with deeply entrenched and conservative tribal traditions prevailing in the southern oil heartland of Iraq. prevent.
The hours Amjad and Rawthan spend in the oil fields are long and the weather unforgiving. They are often asked what they do as women there.
“They tell me the field environment that only men can resist,” Amjad said. He lives on the rig site for six weeks at a time. “If I give up, I’ll prove it.”
Iraq’s happiness, both economically and politically, is trending with oil markets. Oil sales make up 90% of government revenue – and the vast majority of crude oil comes from the south. A price accident brings with it an economic crisis; a boom fills the state coffers. A healthy economy has some stability, while instability has often undermined the strength of the oil sector. Decades of wars, civil unrest and invasion brought production to a standstill.
Following the low oil prices dragged down by the coronavirus pandemic and international disputes, Iraq is showing signs of recovery, with January exports reaching 2.868 million barrels a day at $ 53 a barrel, according to Oil Ministry statistics. .
For most Iraqis, the industry can be summed up by the figures, but Amjad and Rawthan have a more detailed view. Each well presents a set of challenges; some needed more pressure to pump, others were full of toxic gas. “Every field feels like going to a new country,” Amjad said.
Due to the extraordinary importance of the industry to the economy, petrochemical programs in the country’s engineering schools are reserved for students with the highest marks. Both women were in the top 5% of their graduation ceremony at Basra University in 2018.
At school, they get terrified by drilling. For them, it was a new world with its own language: “spudding” was to start drilling, a “Christmas tree” was the top of a well, and “dope” just meant fat.
Every working day, they dive deep into the mysterious affairs beneath the earth’s crust, where they use tools to view formations of minerals and mud until the precious oil is found. “Like throwing a rock into the water and studying the ripples,” Rawthan explained.
To work in the field, Amjad, the daughter of two doctors, knew she had to work for an international oil company – and to do so, she would have to stand out. State-owned enterprises were a dead end; there she would be moved to office work.
“In my spare time, during my holidays, I offered training and enrolled in any program I could do,” Amjad said.
When China’s CPECC came looking for new people, she was the obvious choice. Later, when the Texas-based Schlumberger was looking for wire line engineers, she jumped at the chance. The job requires her to determine how much oil is recoverable from a given well. She passed one difficult exam after another to get to the final interview.
Asked if she’s sure she can do the job, she says, “Hire me, look.”
In two months, she will be swapping her green hard hat for a shiny white one, indicating her status as a supervisor, no longer an apprentice – a month faster than typical.
Rawthan, too, knew she would have to work extra hard to succeed. Once, when her team had to perform a rare ‘sidewalk’ – another bore next to the original drill – she stayed awake all night.
“I did not sleep for 24 hours, but I wanted to understand the whole process from beginning to end,” she said.
Rawthan also now works for Schlumberger, where he collects data from wells that are later used to determine the drilling path. She wants to master drilling, and the company is a world leader in the service.
Family members, friends and even teachers were discouraged: what about the hard physical work? The scorching Basra heat? Living on the rig site for months? And the desert scorpions that roam the reservoirs at night?
“My professors and colleagues laughed a lot, ‘Of course, we’re seeing you out there,’ and said I could not do it, ‘Rawthan said. “But it just pushed me harder.”
However, their parents were supportive. Rawthan’s mother is a civil engineer and her father, the captain of an oil tanker that often spent months at sea.
“They understand why it’s my passion,” she said. She hopes to help establish a union to bring together Iraqi women engineers who think alike. For now, nothing exists.
The work is not without danger. Protests outside oil fields led by angry local tribes and unemployed can disrupt work and sometimes degenerate into violence against oil workers. Every day is confronted with flames of flames indicating Iraq’s apparent oil wealth, and others rejecting state corruption, poor service delivery and unemployment.
But the women are willing to face these hardships. Amjad barely had time to consider them first: it was 11pm and she was needed back at work.
“Drilling never stops,” she said.