The second edition of the AAPG "Carbonate Reservoirs of the Middle East & Their Future Challenges” GTW took place on 30 January – 1 February 2018 at the Crowne Plaza Yas Island Hotel, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. We received 155 attendees from 32 different companies and 14 different countries.

This two-day workshop consisted of technical presentations, core display and poster presentations, followed by a third day offering two optional field trips.

The event focused on addressing the hydrocarbon bearing carbonate reservoirs of the Middle East, in the context of a changing oil market within a more challenging exploration and development environment.

The first day opened with 2 inaugural keynote speeches delivered by Yousuf Al-Mehairi, ADNOC Onshore & Mohammad Faqira, Saudi Aramco.

The workshop included the following technical sessions:

• Session 1: New Play Concepts, Missed Opportunities and the Future of Carbonate Reservoir Exploration
• Session 2: Sequence Stratigraphic Application in Exploration and Development
• Session 3: Seismic Characterization and Mapping of Carbonate Reservoirs
• Session 4: New Approaches to Geomechanics, Petrophysics, Diagenesis, and Geochemistry

The third day consisted of two optional field trips. Abdelwahab Noufal, ADNOC Upstream and Ibrahim Al Ali, ADNOC Onshore guided the participants of the Jebel Hafit field trip where they studied fractures pattern and fracturing mechanism with relation to the paleostress and the link to fractures conductivity.

Meanwhile, Abdulla Al Mansoori, ADNOC Onshore, Ismail Al Hosani, ADNOC Onshore and Hesham Shebl, ADNOC Upstream lead the field trip to the Modern Sabkha Environment were participants studied a complete and undisturbed lateral facies succession from the upper supratidal to the lower intertidal and shallow subtidal.

We would like to take this opportunity to express our most sincere gratitude to our sponsors, Saudi Aramco as the Gold Sponsor, ADNOC as the Field Trips Sponsor, Petroleum Development Oman as the Lunch Sponsor and Ingrain and Petricore as the Coffee Break Sponsors. Thank you all for support without which the workshop would not have been possible.