SPE International President 2013 Mr. Egbert Imomoh recently paid a visit to our campus as part of his Distinguished Lecture Series 2012. Prior to his visit to UTM, Mr Imomoh was fresh from a visit to Universiti Teknologi Petronas and Universiti College Sedaya International, also part of his DLS tour. UTM was initially not listed as one of his planned destinations, but given an outstanding presentation by repesentatives of SPE-UTM especially president Faidhi Fahmi at UTP during their Student-Chapter Interaction Session, the generous Mr Egbert after being thoroughly impressed, insisted that he ‘simply had to visit UTM’ before his next destination, Australia.
On 22 Feburary, Mr. Imomoh was welcomed by the Dean himself Prof. Dr. Ariffin Samsuri, Head-of-Department Prof. Dr. Radzuan Junin, Vice-Head-of-Department Prof. Madya Issham Ismail as well as our other faculty lecturers. Mr. Imomoh subsequently had a tour of our faculty and humble laboratories and facilities allocated for its students.
The highlighted event though was his much-hyped lecture held at N11a, entitled ‘Taking Advantage of a World of Opportunities‘. Mr. Imomoh initially talked about the oil and gas industry as a whole, in a global point of view, taking in achievements and milestones socially and technologically. He then moved on to the main point of his lecture, which was the Society of Petroleum Engineers and its important role in connecting engineers in the field petroleum as well as educating and keeping them informed of the latest happenings within the global industry. He touched on how SPE was growing in numbers as engineers were discovering the importance of the Society, as well as how SPE has benefited its members thus far. He also mentioned the challenges SPE faced, especially from fundamental environmentalists who, perhaps misguidedly, believe that petroleum was not worth the environmental dangers it inflicts upon mother-nature, and his personal experiences dealing with them, throughout his long career.
Mr Imomoh then said that it is issues as such where the importance of SPE members came into play, because ‘it is our job to educated these people of the pragmatic truths behind petroleum and how much it has benefited mankind’, citing an excellent example of how even toothpaste is made of chemicals obtained only from petroleum.
The seminar was concluded by an appreciation ceremony for Mr Egbert Imomoh as well as SPE KL representative. A traditional Sarawakian dance routine by 4th year studentClaudius Clayton was showcased.
A private interview with Mr Imomoh was arranged by SPE-UTM member Ariff Ridzuan, presenting questions on Mr. Imomoh’s views regarding the direction SPE-UTM was headed, specifically with the new ‘hollistic’ events-schedule for the year 2012 which includes events such as SPE UTM Market (building up entrepreneurship skills), SPE Futsal Cup (fitness and competitiveness of members) and English Workshop (aims to improve the quality of spoken English amongst SPE UTM members). Mr. Imomoh gave positive feedback regarding the all-roundedness of the 2012 schedule presented to him, side-stating that professionalism could only be attained if one understood that, realistically, life was not all about work, and that a balance was necessary to achieve success as an engineer, professing his love for golf by the by.
