MOSCOW (MRC) -- Equate Petrochemical Company, Kuwait’s first international petrochemical joint venture, seeks closer link with academia, industry, reported Hydrocarbonprocessing.
Research, innovation and technology are the key elements to a sustainable downstream industry, but academic institutions should make more efforts to speak directly with industry to ensure that R&D efforts are tailored to more specific needs.
"The gap between academia and industry is still very big," said Mohammed Husain, CEO of Kuwait-based EQUATE Petrochemical Company. He spoke on Monday’s business day at the 2015 International Refining and Petrochemical Conference (IRPC).
Husaind believes there should be more of a partnership with academia, so that the skillsets of future employees become more matched with the needs of the industry.
"The trust is not building very much there, in terms of how much our academic can produce an equipped industry," he said. "Most oil companies do have a relationship with academia, and we do support them (financially) because we've been told to."
"But there is a major gap between academic and actual practice," he added.
Husain noted that the size of the gap can vary widely based on the subject matter, adding that one solution could be for more direct collaboration between operators and academic leaders, especially regionally.
2015 has been announced as the year of innovation within the UAE, where IRPC is being held, with particular focus on energy and technology. However, Husain believes more must be done to ensure that industry goals are reflected more thoroughly within the training sector, particularly in the Middle East.
As MRC wrote before, Equate Petrochemical Company said that Gulf petrochemical investments exceeded USD250 billion by 2015.
Equate is an international joint venture between Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC), The Dow Chemical Company (Dow), Boubyan Petrochemical Company (BPC) and Qurain Petrochemical Industries Company (QPIC). Equate is the single operator of a fully integrated world-scale manufacturing facility producing over 5 million tons annually of high-quality petrochemical products, such as polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), styrene monomer, ethylene glycol and palaxylene, which are marketed throughout the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe.
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