Radiation Work Licences for Well Logging in Qatar
October 6, 2026
11 min read
DITEC Experts, Radiation Protection Team, ALDuha Institute for Training and Environmental Consulting
Three licences, two course subjects, one figure
One point before anything else. Meeting the conditions in the Decision is what you can prepare for. Whether a licence is granted, and when, is a decision of the competent authority alone, and nothing in this explanation and nothing in any course is a commitment that a licence will be issued or that it will be issued within a given period. What this article does is set out the condition as the instrument states it and point to the training that bears on it.
Well logging is the radiation practice in Qatar that sits inside a commercial contract most directly. A service company is asked for a crew, a programme and a mobilisation date, and the licences behind that crew are the part of the answer that cannot be arranged in a week. The schedule attached to Decision 4 of 2007 names three logging licences at items 4, 5 and 6 of the industrial applications: the supervisor, the operator with two paragraphs, and the assistant. The three preceding articles in this series read each of them condition by condition. This one does something narrower and more useful to a planner: it sets out the training the three entries name, and nothing else.
Reading the three entries side by side on training alone produces a short and surprisingly uneven picture. There are two course subjects in play across the three licences and not one: a course whose subject is the field of well logging, and a course whose subject is radiation protection in industrial applications. Only one of the three entries states a duration for anything. Only one describes the provider of a course with a different word from the other two. And one of the two course subjects is not named in one of the three entries at all. Each of those four statements is a reading of the items as they are quoted in the verified text behind this series, and each is set out below with the wording it rests on.
The training each of the three entries names
The table reads the three entries on training alone. Where an entry is split into two paragraphs, both are given. It is a reading of items 4, 5 and 6 of the industrial applications, all three quoted in full in the verified text, and nothing is added to it.
Training named in items 4, 5 and 6
| Entry | Well logging course | Radiation protection course | Duration and provider |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supervisor, item 4 | A specialist training course in the field of well logging | Not named in the item | Not less than four weeks, from an approved body |
| Operator, item 5 paragraph A | A training course in the field of well logging, with an alternative examination decided by the authority | A course in radiation protection in industrial applications | No duration stated, from an approved centre |
| Operator, item 5 paragraph B | A specialist training course in the field of well logging | A training course in radiation protection in industrial applications | No duration stated, from an approved centre |
| Assistant, item 6 | A training course in the field of well logging | A training course in radiation protection in industrial applications | No duration stated, from an approved centre |
Two subjects that are not interchangeable
The single most expensive mistake on a logging crew's training file is to treat the two course subjects as one. They are not. One is about the practice: its wording in item 6 is that he pass a training course in the field of well logging from an approved centre. The other is about protection: its wording in the same item is that he pass a training course in radiation protection in industrial applications from an approved centre. Both appear in item 6 and both appear in both paragraphs of item 5, as two separate numbered conditions each time.
So a combined certificate cannot answer both, and a logging course that contains a module on radiation safety does not discharge the protection condition. We put this first in any review because it is the defect that makes a file look complete while it is short by one of the conditions of its own item, and because the certificate that is usually missing is the protection one: the logging course is the commercial qualification a service company buys without being asked twice, and the protection course is the one that gets folded into it on paper.
One further reading of the table is worth stating because it bears directly on how a crew is trained. The radiation protection course in industrial applications is named in the operator entry in both of its paragraphs and in the assistant entry, and it is not named in the supervisor entry. The supervisor article in this series sets out what we take from that and what we do not: a licensing condition is not the whole of the obligation, and the protection duties the Law, the Regulation and the conditions of a facility licence place on a licensee are not reduced by the absence of a training condition in one item. For a planner the practical point is simply this: do not build a crew training plan that assumes the three licences name the same two courses, because on the words of the instrument they do not.
The four-week figure, and the word used for the provider
Two features belong to item 4 alone among the three. The first is a stated minimum duration. The supervisor's training condition reads that he pass a specialist training course in the field of well logging of not less than four weeks in duration from an approved body, and neither paragraph of item 5 nor item 6 states a duration for anything. The figure therefore belongs to that condition in that entry, and carrying it across to the operator or the assistant is reading into the instrument something it does not say.
The second is the word used for the provider. Item 4 asks for the course from an approved body, and the conditions in items 5 and 6 ask for their courses from an approved centre. The noun differs; the describing word is the same in all three. The items set out in this explanation define neither term, do not say who gives the approval, and do not say whether it is a general status or given for a particular course. We record the difference in wording and we do not read a rule into it, which is the practice this series follows throughout. What is useful is to ask in the Arabic words of the item, naming your course and your provider, and to keep the written reply.
There is a third feature that is not a reading of the instrument but of our copy of it, and it is set out here because a planner needs to know where the ground is soft. In the printed copy of the schedule that we hold, the tail of the examination condition in paragraph A of item 5 arrives damaged: the last word has collapsed in the print. We quote only the two clean parts of that condition, the training-course limb, that he pass a training course in the field of well logging from an approved centre, and the alternative, or that he pass the examination the Council decides, and we do not state its full wording. So the examination alternative is the one route in this group that we will not help a client plan around until the wording in force has been obtained.
Planning a logging crew's licences
The order below is how we work through a logging crew with a client who has a mobilisation date. It is the Institute's own working practice, and the items set out in this explanation impose no plan and no form of file.
Order of work on a logging crew
Name the entry for every person before you buy any course
- The conditions attach to a named function, so the entry decides which courses that person needs and at what level. A crew role on a programme is not the same thing as an entry in the schedule, and the three entries do not name the same training.
- For the operator the entry alone is not enough, because the entry has two paragraphs that differ in the academic condition and in the number of years. Which paragraph applies follows from the practice being licensed and not from the person.
Buy the two subjects as two courses
- The well logging condition and the radiation protection condition are separate numbered conditions wherever both appear, and each is to come from an approved centre in the words of the item. A single combined certificate answers one of them and leaves the other without evidence.
- If budget forces an order, note which of the two the Decision names for more of your crew: the radiation protection course is named in the operator entry in both paragraphs and in the assistant entry. That is an order of purchase and never an order of deployment: a person who has not met a condition of his own licence is not put on a job while the certificate is pending.
Settle the duration and the provider in writing, in that order
- For the supervisor, the training condition states a minimum of four weeks, so ask the provider to put the dates or the contact hours on the certificate itself before the course is paid for. A certificate that is silent on duration cannot evidence that requirement later.
- Then ask the Ministry about the standing of the named course at the named provider, quoting the words of the item, because the item describes the provider of the supervisor's course with a different word from the other two entries.
Use the trainee provision for the years, and for nothing else
- The third part of the schedule provides that a licence to practise radiation work as a trainee is granted to a person in whom the conditions of the licence sought are present with the exception of the experience condition, and then in that case he may not practise radiation work except under the supervision of a licensed person. So it covers the one year or the three years of the operator entry and does not cover a course that has not been passed.
- Decide at the same time how the trainee period will be recorded, because the records that evidence practical experience in well logging have to exist while it is being gained.
Questions we are asked when a crew is being planned
Does the four-week figure apply to the whole crew?
It appears in the supervisor entry, item 4, and it does not appear in either paragraph of the operator entry or in the assistant entry. Those two ask for a logging course and state no duration for it. We read each entry on its own words and we do not carry a figure across entries. Whether the authority applies a duration in practice to the other two is a question to put to it in writing.
Can one radiation protection course cover the whole logging crew?
The condition is on each person and is satisfied by each person passing it, so a course can be delivered to a crew together while the condition remains individual: each licence holder needs his own evidence of having passed. What cannot be done is to treat one person's certificate as covering a colleague, or to treat a crew briefing as the course the condition names.
We need a crew mobilised in six weeks. What is the realistic path?
We will not give you a timetable, because the licence and its timing are for the competent authority alone, and nothing in this explanation is a commitment that a licence will be issued or that it will be issued within a given period. What we can do is tell you which conditions are capable of being prepared in parallel and which are not: a course has a calendar, the medical examination has whatever interval the Ministry prescribes, and years of practical experience cannot be compressed at all. The experience condition is the one addressed by the first of the provisions in the third part of the schedule, through the trainee licence, on the wording quoted above.
Our practice is not one of the three logging entries. What then?
The third part of the schedule provides for that: licence applications for the specialties that are not stated in these instructions are referred to the Radiation Protection Committee to decide on them, and the Committee shall be guided by international instructions and standards, in particular those issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency. So the route is referral to the Committee, the decision is the Committee's, and the guidance it is directed to is named. What is not open to you is to apply the conditions of the nearest listed entry to yourself, and in a logging context that usually means assuming the operator entry governs a role that the schedule does not describe.
Does the Institute provide the specialist well logging course?
No. The specialist well logging training the Decision names is a separate qualification obtained from a provider that offers it, and the Institute does not issue it. What the Institute delivers is the radiation protection course in industrial applications that the operator and assistant entries require by name, and alongside it the file review, the enquiry drafting and the records advice described below.
How the Institute can help
Two findings recur when we review a logging crew rather than a single file. The first is a training plan built on the assumption that the three entries name the same two courses, so the supervisor is sent on a course the operator needed and the duration requirement in his own entry goes without evidence. The second is a crew in which the logging certificates are complete and the radiation protection certificates are not, because the protection condition was read as part of the logging qualification.
The Institute delivers radiation protection training for industrial applications, maps a crew against items 4, 5 and 6 person by person and condition by condition, drafts the enquiries to the Ministry on the standing of a named course at a named provider, on the wording in force of the examination condition in paragraph A, and on the prescribed medical examination, and advises on the records that evidence practical experience in well logging while it is being gained. The specialist well logging training the Decision names is a separate qualification obtained from a provider that offers it, and the Institute does not issue it. What the Institute delivers is the radiation protection course in industrial applications that the operator and assistant entries name as a subject; whether a particular course at a particular centre satisfies the approved-centre limb of the condition is for the Ministry to say.
Scope of what the Institute does: training and consulting. Field radiation surveys are carried out through specialist partners. The Institute does not carry out laboratory analysis, instrument calibration or equipment testing.
A technical note. The conditions in this Decision are licensing conditions, not site work instructions. Meeting them, and the licence that may follow, replaces nothing in operational protection. A logging run lowers a sealed source into a borehole and brings it back, and the pattern that recurs in incidents in this practice is a source that did not come back and a crew that did not establish that it had not. The controlled area is monitored at its boundary with a survey meter that is within its calibration validity and response-checked before the run, and the run is not finished, and the source container is not handled as empty or as full, until a measurement says which it is. That is not inferred from a cable depth counter, from a mechanical indicator, or from the run having gone as planned. If the measurement does not establish that the source is in its container, the operation stops where it is, no one approaches the tool, and the licensee acts on his own emergency arrangements and notifies the Ministry. A source that may not have been recovered is not a matter to be settled on the wellsite between shifts. These are obligations on the licensee under the Law, the Regulation and the conditions of his own licence, and their place is not this Decision.
A note on two words the Decision uses for the source of a course. In the well logging entries the Decision asks for a course from a centre it describes with an Arabic word that this explanation renders as approved, and in one place, the supervisor entry, it asks instead for the course to come from a body described with that same word. The items set out in this explanation do not define either term, do not say who gives that approval, and do not say whether it is a general status or given for a particular course. In the Decision this description qualifies the provider of the training and no other party. The English word is a rendering chosen for this explanation and is not a term of art: our practical reading is to ask in the Arabic wording of the Decision, naming the specific course and the specific provider, and to keep the answer in writing, because what the instrument leaves open the authority settles. The Institute is a licensed training provider and describes itself that way and no other way.
A note on one place in the text. In the printed copy of the schedule that we hold, the tail of the examination condition in paragraph A of the well logging operator entry arrives damaged: the last word has collapsed in the print. We therefore quote from that condition only the two parts that are clean, and we do not quote its tail or build any reading on its wording. Anyone who intends to rely on that alternative should read the condition on the page image of the Official Gazette, or ask the Ministry for the wording in force, before acting on it.
A note on the authority named in the text. The word the Decision uses for the authority is the Council. It is the word of a 2007 instrument whose preamble refers to the Executive Regulation issued by decision of the President of the Supreme Council for the Environment and Natural Reserves, number 4 of 2003. The body that word names no longer exists. Competence today sits with the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, and the unit concerned is named in the organisational decisions as the Radiation Protection Department. The word Council is kept only where this explanation renders what the instrument itself says, because that is the instrument's own word; in the Institute's own advice it is written as the Ministry. Read Council as the Ministry throughout.
This explanation is published for awareness by the radiation protection team at ALDuha Institute for Training and Environmental Consulting. The English text is an explanation, not a certified translation: the Arabic text published in the Official Gazette governs in case of any difference, and the official Arabic wording of every condition discussed here is quoted in full on the Arabic version of this article. This explanation is introductory. It is not a legal opinion, it does not replace the conditions of your own licence, and it does not replace review by the regulator. Last updated 6 October 2026.