Background The COVID-19 pandemic began to affect the world in early 2020. As a preventive measure, schools in the UAE adopted remote learning. This study aimed to assess the effects of the lockdown and remote learning on the health-related behaviours of school students in the UAE. Methods A cross-sectional study using an online survey comprising 33 questions related to physical activity, eating, sleeping and screen time was answered by the students’ parents. Chi-square tests, paired Student’s t tests and frequency tables were used for analysis. Results A total of 27,754 responses were received: 46.3% of the parents indicated a significant decrease in physical activity; 44.6% indicated an increase in unhealthy snack consumption; and 51.9% indicated decreased food ordering from restaurants. The percentage of students who slept more than 9 hours and those who slept less than 6 hours increased. Screen time increased significantly for both educational and entertainment purposes (P value < 0.0001). Conclusion The study showed changes in the lifestyle and health-related behaviours of school students as indicated by their parents. Risk factors such as a lack of physical activity, increased food consumption, sleeping and screen time were directly affected. Therefore, it is important to further investigate these changes and their effects to help design targeted health education programs and promotion campaigns.

The WAG (water-alternating-gas) recovery process is a well-established process for enhanced oil recovery with several successful field applications. This process is evaluated for potential application in a giant, offshore Abu Dhabi field. This paper describes an evaluation approach of the WAG process application to the subject field. Many separate reservoir simulation models were created to evaluate various aspects of the WAG recovery process. The models addressed WAG operating parameters such as implementation timing, and the effect of WAG parameters (WAG ratio, cycle length). The models were also used to estimate the rate and recovery impact of WAG implementation using different injectants (off-site available hydrocarbon gas, associated gas, enriched gas). The evaluation process for the giant field started with a small 3D sector model derived from a full-field model of the most significant reservoir unit. This model was extensively used to test the operational parameters. The findings were then tested with larger-scale models for full-field evaluations. Finally, grid sensitivity studies were done using 2D cross-sectional models to calibrate the recovery results from the coarser gridded full-field models. Results show that WAG incremental recovery over the waterflood recovery for the situations studied is about 7 to 8% OOIP (original-oil-in-place). A WAG ratio of 4:1 appears to be optimal. Incremental WAG recovery is insensitive to cycle lengths and timing of WAG implementation. Miscible injectants provide higher recoveries than immiscible gas injection. Model derived recovery benefits were sensitive to the grid size with as much as twice the likely benefit shown with a coarser grid.

The pandemic has forced closures of primary schools resulting in loss of learning time on a global scale. In addition to face coverings, social distancing, and hand hygiene, an efficient testing method is important to mitigate spread of COVID-19 in schools. We evaluated the feasibility of a saliva-based SARS-CoV-2 PCR testing program on 18 primary schools in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Qualitative results show that children 4 to 5 years had difficulty producing an adequate saliva specimen compared to those 6 to 12 years. A short training video on saliva collection beforehand helps demystify the process for students and parents alike. Informed consent was challenging and should be done beforehand by school health nurses or other medical professionals to reassure parents and maximize participation. Telephone interviews with school administrators resulted in an overall 83.3% response rate. 93% of school administrators had a positive experience with saliva testing and felt the program improved the safety of their schools. 73% of respondents supported the ongoing use of saliva testing for SARS-CoV-2 on their school campuses. On-campus saliva testing is a feasible option for primary schools to screen for COVID-19 in their student population to help keep their campuses safe and open for learning.

In this paper, we investigate the potential for applying miscible nitrogen injection as an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method for a high-temperature, low-permeability carbonate reservoir, which contains a volatile oil with some H2S and CO2. The field, which is located onshore Abu Dhabi, is still in its early development phases but suffers from relatively low throughput rate because of low permeability. Various gas injection schemes are being considered, with different source gases. At the prevailing reservoir pressures, extensive phase behavior studies confirm that the reservoir fluids develop miscibility with nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and hydrocarbon gas. The simulation studies involve a number of sensitivity runs performed on sector models, which are sufficiently fine-gridded to capture the compositional transition zone propagating between injector and producer pairs. Miscible nitrogen injection comes out as a viable option with the potential to increase recovery by 10 to 20% above the current water flood development scheme. The significantly improved sweep and displacement efficiency are due to N2 miscibility with reservoir oil under reservoir conditions, possibility of increased PV injected in a N2 WAG scheme, and the ability to maintain a higher reservoir pressure (at initial reservoir pressure). From a surface facilities point of view, techniques for N2 capturing is mature, tried and tested. N2 being inert does not pose corrosion risks to well completion and surface facilities. However, capital costs for N2 rejection units – if utilised in a N2 WAG EOR scheme – will need to be taken into account. Although N2 WAG EOR is seen to be very attractive for the reservoir under study, alternative EOR schemes are also being actively evaluated. The aim is to arrive at an optimum EOR project for the reservoir in line the achieving the 70% oil recovery aspiration.

The subject reservoir has been on production for decades and suffered early water breakthrough due to significant geologic heterogeneity. The existing dynamic model was last history matched in 2010, and the match quality had deteriorated over the last few years of production life. Significant volume of new data had become available, including SCAL, cores, wireline logs, production and surveillance data which were recently leveraged to update the static model based on new geomodelling best practices. The justification for progressing to history match the new static model was the business need for a fit-for-purpose tool required to support the life cycle development and management strategy for the reservoir which is evolving from 5-spot flood scheme to line drive utilizing state of the art pilot well technology. Water channeling is an important phenomenon in the stratigraphically zoned reservoir, and since some of the diagenetic features are co-located at the same intervals, identifying which are key actors for fluid flow was one of the greatest challenges encountered, hence the adoption of fluid travel time concept for mapping and tracking of preferential flow pathways, and for accelerated history match learnings. Intensity attribute measured in count per foot for diagenetic features underpinned spatial permeability modification for model calibration. However, history match changes which include facies intensity modification, footprint and geometry adjustment, permeability magnitude, etc were not just expedient on achieving history match but were all data supported and fed through a closed iterative geo-engineering loop for geologic plausibility and consistency verification prior to been incorporated in the dynamic model. A good history match was achieved for all calibrated parameters, and the near-perfect vertical conformance prediction of 10 recently acquired water saturation logs is a confirmation of the integrity and predictive capability of the New Generation Model.