Doha: The Biological and Environmental Sciences Department at Qatar University (QU) College of Arts and Sciences and Total E&P Golfe Limited QSTP-B have singed an agreement to collaborate in finding environmental-friendly solutions for the reuse of produced water for irrigation.
The signing ceremony was attended by Dr Eiman Mustafawi, Dean of the college; Christophe Eon, Vice-President, HR, Communications and Corporate Social Responsibility, Total E&P Golfe Limited QSTP-B; college Associate Deans Dr Hassan Abdulaziz (Academic Affairs); Dr Steven Wright (Planning and Quality Assurance); and Dr Khalifa Al Hazaa (Outreach and Engagement); Dr Fatima Ammar Al Naemi, Head, Biological and Environmental Sciences Department; and college faculty members.
The agreement included a fund of $100,000 offered by Total E&P Golfe Limited QSTP-B for the project titled “Innovative environmental-friendly solutions for the reuse of produced waters for irrigation purposes and its effects on plant and soil characteristics”, in which two master students from the department will be involved as part of their master thesis.
Dr Mustafawi said: “I’d like to thank Total Qatar for being with us today and I’d like to thank the department of biological and environmental sciences for being so active and eager to establish such collaboration with the industry the department has been so active this year and the year before and previously in working with the industry to provide the opportunities to help students get hands-on experience.”
“We appreciate Total for collaborating with us and providing us with this grant for this very critical research project which addresses water scarcity in Qatar as clean resources of water is very limited in Qatar and the region in general so the normal solution is recycle the available resources we have in irrigation and other applications,” Dr Mustafawi added.
Eon said: “This year is a very special for Total as our Company celebrates 80 years of Presence in Qatar. In Total, we prefer to say 80 years of presence with Qatar as it seems a better way to underline the fact that we have a built such a long relationship based on fruitful interactions and partnerships with various stakeholders.”
“We celebrate one type of these partnerships with QU and the College of Arts & Science. The MoU that was signed in 2011 by both parties, Total and QU put an emphasis on the two sides of a fruitful collaboration: the academic cooperation and the development of the students. This is what we tend to valorize and promote at Total as part of our Corporate Social Responsibility policy particularly by reinforcing the links between the education system and the industry. It is also very much in line with the QNV 2030 as two of its pillars are about Human Capital and the Environment. Total is committed to a large R&D program for water management with links and interactions with our R&D teams in France. In Qatar, where water scarcity is an important issue, we are focusing on the beneficial reuse of produced water for irrigation. The idea is to find the most adequate combination between suitably treated water from our operations, local plants and soils to achieve a sustainable irrigation system.
Today, as a first step, we are funding a study to screen plants and soils for their properties, based on the knowledge of the water quality that we produce.”
The Peninsula
