A Saudi pure-play provider of energy services

Saudi Arabia

Naif Al Hadrami, executive director of National Energy Services Reunited (NESR), talks to The Energy Year about emerging opportunities in Saudi Arabia’s upstream segment and investing in next-generation drilling technology to drive the company’s next phase of growth. NESR is a Nasdaq-listed oilfield and production services provider that operates in more than 15 countries across the MENA and Asia Pacific regions.

Can you share insights on NESR’s capabilities and key projects in Saudi Arabia and the country’s importance to your global portfolio?
NESR is the largest, indigenous pure-play provider of diversified energy services in the MENA region, with nearly 7,000 employees across more than 15 countries and 20 product and service lines. Having nearly quadrupled the size of the company since its founding in 2018, we have established a top-five market share in our largest segments, including coiled tubing, cementing, well testing and hydraulic fracturing, among others.
Our key projects in Saudi Arabia include our completion services in Jafurah, the largest unconventional resource in the MENA region, where we’ve leveraged technologies and operational strategies to make Jafurah among the highest-performing unconventional resources in the world. We are also supporting other gas development projects in Saudi Arabia that directly contribute to Vision 2030 by growing domestic gas capacity and offsetting crude burning for power.
Additionally, we are bringing unique decarbonisation and circular water technologies to Saudi Arabia, which further supports the water neutrality and renewable energy aims outlined in Vision 2030.
Both our core business and emerging technology opportunities support In-Kingdom Total Value Add. We out-invest our similarly-sized peers, hiring and training more local talent, and we out-spend the market on our supply chain and operational asset base to maintain our National Champion position with Saudi Aramco.

What is the impact of NESR’s uplisting to the Nasdaq Capital Market on the company’s financial performance and operational capabilities?
In October 2024, we relisted on the Nasdaq Capital Market, and we remain the only US-listed, pure-play energy services company in the MENA region. Our Nasdaq strategy is simple – we aim to connect global equity investors to the unmatched upstream growth opportunities of Saudi Arabia and the broader MENA region. We are a unique vehicle in this regard.
In doing so, we help accelerate investments that ultimately support Saudi human capital, research and development, supply chains, academia and peripheral sectors – particularly water and industrial minerals.
Listing on Nasdaq lowers the cost of capital that NESR would otherwise have as a private, regional service company, which has already helped the company execute multiple M&As in the MENA region and more than triple its size since 2018. We plan to maximise value for shareholders by continuing to deliver industry-leading financial results. We are also exploring a potential listing on the Saudi stock market.

How have technological advancements such as the Roya drilling platform impacted your strategy?
Since 2018, our sector-leading growth has been mainly achieved through geographic expansion and segment “pull-through” across our key anchor countries to best leverage our established MENA footprint and supply chain.
At the same time, we have been investing in next-generation technology, not only in the core business but also in frontier areas like Tier 1 directional drilling – rotary steerable systems, logging-while-drilling, measurement-while-drilling – whose commercialisation is now expected to drive the next phase of transformative growth for NESR.
Our pivot to becoming a technology solutions company is additive to our topline growth, and we also expect the quality of the company’s revenue to improve, which will enhance our capital returns profile and the investment thesis for capital markets around the world. In addition, our focus on technology is highly collaborative with our customers, and Saudi Aramco has been a foremost supporter in this regard.
We are probably doing some of the most unique work in the global upstream energy sector with our circular water and mineral technologies, what we call our Zero Mineral & Liquid Discharge (ZMLD) concept.

How does NESR’s Environmental & Decarbonisation Applications (NEDA) segment contribute to operational efficiency and sustainability in the MENA region?
We established our NEDA segment, which translates from Arabic as “Call to Action,” as a simple extension of our “open technology platform” approach in our core business. However, instead of focusing on traditional oilfield services, the NEDA platform aims to bring technologies from outside the oil and gas sector to help our customers address challenges related to decarbonisation and water.
We found a Dutch desalination technology for recycling high-salinity produced water, an Australian metals and mining technology to help us generate oilfield brine from wastewater and a Danish marine scrubber technology to help the oilfield deploy one of the most robust ceramic ultrafiltration methods and lower the cost of ownership for disposal injection and EOR.
That is just in NEDA’s water subsegment. We also have an AI-based continuous methane detection platform, Qube, which aims to revolutionise how GHG [greenhouse gas] is quantified and how leaks are detected across the energy value chain, not just upstream. Finally, we have partnerships in flare abatement and gas processing, as well as in carbon capture and sequestration.
Our portfolio is well positioned to support the kingdom’s water neutrality directive. Our ZMLD projects have been featured in Aramco’s sustainability reports, and we have the ambition to scale these to asset-level deployments. Still, there are opportunities to bring more technologies into Saudi Arabia, such as HIROX, which NESR believes can help Aramco completely recycle its crude wash water in gas-oil separation plants, an application that NESR is currently exploring with key Aramco stakeholders.

What role is NESR’s partnership with the Saudi Arabian Drilling Academy (SADA) playing in developing local Saudi talent?
NESR is demonstrating its commitment to talent development in various ways. We sponsor students from multiple SADA specialisations, recruit them after graduation and continue to support their growth through our internal on-the-job training programmes. This year, we have 50 students under our sponsorship programme.
We also contribute to refining SADA’s curriculums by participating in their Technical Advisory Committee to assess the industry’s talent needs and help improve teaching methods. Our involvement extends to supporting development projects such as TRS [tubular running service] training and specialised training in directional drilling and measurement-while-drilling.
Additionally, we collaborate with SADA to develop our internal resources, such as by using their next-generation well facilities for wireline operations demonstrations in our wireline training session. This partnership reflects NESR’s dedication to nurturing the next generation of talent in the oil and gas sector.

What are your key objectives for growth in 2025 and beyond, and how do you plan to expand your market presence?
NESR has accomplished much in its short history, but we are only getting started. The next phase of our growth will be technology-driven, particularly in drilling and decarbonisation solutions, but there are also country-specific growth opportunities that are exciting.
Saudi gas and unconventional resources will be a key area of investment for the company, building on NESR’s long history of success in Jafurah. Kuwait is another area where we see growth opportunities. The company aims to again double its size in the next three or four years.

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