Applied Optimization in the Petroleum Industry

Part I.- Background.- Introduction to the Petroleum and Petrochemical Industries.- Introduction to Optimization Models and Techniques.- Part II.- Applied Optimization in the Petroleum Industry.- Optimum Locations for Drilling Platforms.- Simulation-Based Optimization of Valve Inspection.- Refinery Turnaround Maintenance Scheduling.- Simulation-Based Days-Off Scheduling of a Pipeline Maintenance Workforce.- Optimum Gasoline Blending in Petroleum Refining.- Refined Products Distribution Network Design.- Remote-Site Employee Scheduling with Transportation Considerations.- Ship-Loading Scheduling at an Export Terminal.

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 3,300 Google Scholar citations.