Q&A: Jesús Lamas on Driving Asset Performance Through Technology and Integration

The Middle East remains one of the world's most strategically important energy regions, with operators focused on increasing production capacity, maximizing recovery from existing assets and accelerating digital transformation. In this executive Q&A, Jesús Lamas, SLB president for the Middle East and North Africa, discusses the trends shaping the region, the growing importance of production and recovery technologies, the practical application of AI, and where SLB sees the greatest opportunities ahead.

What are you hearing most often from operators across the Middle East right now?

Across the Middle East, national oil companies are balancing ambitious production capacity targets with the need to maximize returns from existing infrastructure. Operators are looking for ways to bring new developments online faster while improving performance from some of the world's largest producing assets. They are increasingly focused on how technology, integration and digital workflows can help achieve both objectives simultaneously.

SLB helps customers connect reservoir understanding, well construction, production and digital technologies within integrated workflows focused on outcomes. Whether the objective is better managed assets, improving recovery, optimizing production or operating more efficiently, success starts with understanding the desired outcome and applying the right capabilities to achieve it. Across the region, we see operators looking for solutions that deliver measurable production impact, whether that means bringing shut-in wells back online, improving recovery from mature fields or accelerating new capacity.

How are operators balancing investment in new developments with the need to get more from existing assets?

This balance is particularly important in the Middle East because operators are simultaneously developing major new projects while managing some of the world's most productive and mature reservoirs. New developments are critical to future capacity growth, but equally important is improving recovery and extending the productive life of existing assets that continue to generate significant value. Increasingly, operators are looking at the entire asset lifecycle rather than treating greenfield and brownfield investments as separate priorities.

In many mature assets, targeted interventions can still create substantial value. In North Africa, for example, an integrated production optimization program unlocked significant incremental oil and delivered production results three times higher than initial forecasts.

Production and recovery are growing priority across the region. Where do you see the biggest opportunities in the Middle East?

The Middle East is home to many of the world's largest producing reservoirs, and even small improvements in recovery can translate into substantial value. We see major opportunities in production optimization, water management, enhanced recovery strategies and the application of intelligent completions and intervention technologies.

We're already seeing what this can mean in practice. Across the region, operators are combining reservoir insight with targeted production and recovery technologies to address specific field challenges. In Kuwait, integrated water-control and conformance workflows improved oil production while supporting additional recovery from surrounding assets. In the UAE, intelligent stimulation technologies have helped operators unlock tight carbonate reservoirs and achieve production rates that exceeded initial forecasts.

AI is a major focus across the industry. Where do you see it making a practical difference in operations?

Many Middle East operators have made significant investments in digital infrastructure and data platforms over the past decade. The next step is turning that data into faster, higher-quality operational decisions. AI has the potential to accelerate subsurface evaluation, optimize production systems, improve drilling performance and help engineers identify opportunities and risks much earlier. The greatest value comes from combining AI with deep domain expertise and operational workflows that support decision-making.

We are already seeing this shift in the region, where national oil companies are applying AI to areas such as production analytics, rig scheduling and data quality management to improve operational decision-making at scale. For us, the important question is not what AI can do, but what outcomes it can improve. Connecting data, workflows, people and AI can help operators identify constraints earlier, improve decisions and move from insight to action faster.

Looking ahead, where do you see the greatest opportunities for SLB and its customers in the region?

What stands out is the opportunity to help operators across the Middle East improve asset performance at scale, whether through new capacity, higher recovery or greater production efficiency. The region has the scale, technical ambition and digital foundation to lead in this area. The next step is connecting subsurface, drilling, production and digital capabilities around the performance of the asset, rather than optimizing each part independently.

The opportunity is particularly compelling in mature assets, where technologies that improve production and recovery continue to deliver meaningful results, from restoring more barrels per day of liquids production to increasing gas output across the region. Ultimately, success is measured by the performance and value we create for our customers.

The next chapter for our industry will be defined by what technology enables customers to achieve. Our focus at SLB is on helping customers turn innovation into measurable performance and lasting value.