Applied Optimization in the Petroleum Industry

The book addresses optimization in the petroleum industry from a practical, large-scale-application-oriented point of view. The models and techniques presented help to optimize the limited resources in the industry in order to maximize economic benefits, ensure operational safety, and reduce environmental impact. The book discusses several important real-life applications of optimization in the petroleum industry, ranging from the scheduling of personnel time to the blending of gasoline. It covers a wide spectrum of relevant activities, including drilling, producing, maintenance, and distribution. The text begins with an introductory overview of the petroleum industry and then of optimization models and techniques. The main body of the book details a variety of applications of optimization models and techniques within the petroleum industry.

Hesham K. Alfares has been a member of the Shura Council (Consultative Parliament) of Saudi Arabia since October 2020. Until January 2021, he was the chairman in the Systems Engineering (SE) Department at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Dr. Alfares joined the SE Department at KFUPM as a lecturer in 1984, became a full professor in 2004, and the chairman in 2015.

Dr. Alfares obtained a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1982. He obtained an M.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 1984. He obtained a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Arizona State University in 1991.

Dr. Alfares spent a full-year sabbatical leave in 1999-2000, in addition to five summer terms, working in Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia. He spent the summer 2010 term as a visiting Fulbright scholar at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. He spent the spring 2012 term as a visiting scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He spent four summer terms as a visiting British Council scholar at four UK universities: Warwick in 1993, Nottingham in 1998, Loughborough in 2003, and East Anglia in 2013.

Dr. Alfares research interests are in the areas of production and inventory control, scheduling, maintenance, simulation, and applied optimization, with a focus on modeling and optimization of petrochemical systems. He has more than 130 publications, including 61 journal papers and 4 book chapters. He has 3 US patents and more than 3,100 Google Scholar citations.

Dr. Alfares has been a member of the editorial boards of the Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering, the Journal of Industrial Engineering, and the International Journal of Applied Industrial Engineering. He served in the guest editorial board of a special issue of the European Journal of Operational Research. He has been a member of the scientific and organizing committees of 35 scientific conferences.

Dr. Alfares won grants for 12 funded research projects and 6 industrial consulting projects. He won an out-of-state graduate student tuition-waiver scholarship from Arizona State University for the 1986-1987 academic year. He won KFUPM Excellence in Research Award three times, in the years 2003, 2008, and 2020. He won Almarai Prize for Scientific Innovation in Industrial Engineering in 2014. He has been a fellow of the Industrial Engineering and Operations Management Society International since 2020.