Ateeq Al Qemzi was in his teens when he arrived for his first day of work at the Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company – a boy asked to tackle a man’s job.
It was November 1964. The oil industry was in its infancy, with the desert a dangerous and unforgiving place into which you ventured knowing there was a chance you might not come back in one piece.
There were no roads, no phones and no satellite navigation once you set out into the dunes of the Western Region, just the Land Rover or the Dodge Power Wagon.
Mr Al Qemzi has seen and lived it all. This month marks the 50th anniversary of his service to the oil industry and he was honoured in a ceremony by the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations (Adco), as ADPC is now called.
“They worked diligently, like soldiers on a mission,” says Saqer Al Muhairbi, another oil industry veteran who has known Mr Al Qemzi from the beginning.
“The spirits were always high. They were real men. They ate out of cans and often their tea canisters would be filled with sand.”
Born in Abu Dhabi in 1944, Mr Al Qemzi grew up in a time of economic hardship that lasted until the discovery of oil in the late 1950s. When he reported to the ADPC training centre, the first oil had only been exported two years earlier.
The two training centres – the first in Tarif in 1960 and a second that opened seven years later in Abu Dhabi – were crucial to Emiratis playing their part in the fast-growing oil industry and the prosperity it would bring.
Many of the industry’s leaders were given their start there, with a five-year apprenticeship in administration or technical skills and a chance to study in the UK for higher qualifications.
On their first day, apprentices swapped their kanduras for smart company uniforms. Technical trainees such as Mr Al Qemzi could dress less formally but those in administration, jokingly referred to as the “soft side” of the business, were required to wear a tie.
A 1967 photograph of that first class of 23 Emiratis graduates survives. It shows Mr Al Qemzi seated in an open-neck shirt with his fellow apprentices and their western tutors.
In a career stretching into its sixth decade, he has managed two of Abu Dhabi’s main onshore oilfields, at Bu Hasa and Bab, and helped to oversee the development of the Zakoum offshore field and infrastructure at Jebel Dhanna and Fujairah.
In 2007, Mr Al Qemzi was given an Abu Dhabi Award, while his years of service in the industry also earned him an Emirates Appreciation Award.
Today he is senior vice president for the terminals, pipeline and oil and gas movement operations, the gateway for Abu Dhabi’s oil to the international markets.
Ahmed Al Hammadi, another senior vice president at Adco, describes Mr Al Qemzi as “the father of us all. He started from nothing. Never depended on any-one to teach him”.
The two men met in December 1985 at a field in the Western Region. Mr Al Qemzi already had a reputation, says Mr Al Hammadi.
“He was a tough man, very serious. Many were worried about working with him, but after they really got to know him well, they found him a reasonable and fair man.”
What Mr Hammadi remembers most is Mr Al Qemzi’s three rules for newcomers: to read as much as you can; not to be afraid to ask questions; and always to look at all the angles of a subject.
“It was important for him to see us asking the right questions that would help us get a proper understanding of what we see,” he says. “He would say, ‘Never be superficial in your questions. Go deeper, go many layers deeper’.
“‘When you see two pipes together, some might see it only as a pipe. However, you should ask yourself, what is this pipe? What does it transfer? Why is it placed here and not anywhere else? What else could it transfer?”
Mr Al Qemzi’s other rule was that everyone should spend as much time outdoors as possible.
“He hated anyone to stay in the office, especially those who are trainees,” says Mr Al Hammadi.
He recalls Mr Al Qemzi constantly observing his surroundings, checking tyre tracks and footprints in the sand and scanning the horizon with his binoculars.
“He knew what everyone was up to and whether they were doing their job or not. It is impossible for anyone who knew Al Qemzi not to have learnt something from him.
“It is a man’s commitment to work and to his country rather than a commitment to himself that makes him a leader.”
David Heard arrived from the UK in 1963 to work as an engineer in the onshore oilfields. It was a small world and he soon came to know Mr Al Qemzi, who he describes as “extremely knowledgeable”.
“I remember seeing Ateeq for the first time near well 51,” Mr Heard recalls. “It was south from Bu Hasa, one of the early wells discovered.
“The purpose of our visit was to test its flow, measure the pressure from the top and from the bottom, and to see how many barrels a day it would produce. It was a deep well, around 8,000 feet.”
He is full of praise for Mr Al Qemzi, “a legend” of the oil industry.
“He has seen most of it, he spent a lot of time in the field,” Mr Heard says. “He is quite a remarkable man. Anyone who knows his name respects him.”
He says Mr Al Qemzi is also a man who remembers his roots.
“Although he sits behind his desk in the headquarters of Adco, I know Ateeq is happiest in the desert. He is a real man of the desert.”
balhashemi@thenational.ae
