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MUSCAT, APRIL 2025

Muscat: generative models on the fourth floor at Desert Sand

17 April 2025 · Salam Square South, Muscat, Oman · IMPACT

A working session on generative models at Desert Sand Oil & Gas, Salam Square South, Muscat, on 17 April 2025, followed the next morning by a return to CCED House.

A canyon in the Hajar mountains, the limestone bedding planes stacked and tilted along the wadi wall.

The lobby directory at Salam Square South lists Desert Sand Oil & Gas at 401, on the fourth floor. PricewaterhouseCoopers takes the other three units on that landing. Dentons, the Yaqdhan Al Busaidi law firm and Marsh McLennan sit on the third, Oman Shell on the second, Ericsson and Motorola Solutions on the ground floor. On the afternoon of 17 April 2025 the fourth floor was the address.

The session ran off a wall screen in a small meeting room. On it: the variational autoencoder objective written out in full, the reconstruction term, the KL divergence against a standard Gaussian prior, and below that a section on generative adversarial networks and the minimax game between generator and discriminator. The material was served live from a working notes site rather than a slide deck. A pull-up banner stood at the end of the table with the Desert Sand mark, a pump jack, and a half-visible line about being proud of their employees.

The strapline on the office wall reads: connected globally, excelling locally. The room held a few people, not a hall. That is usually the right size for teaching a derivation instead of a headline, and the questions come back faster.

The next morning went to a different address. CCED HOUSE, white letters above the entrance, the CC Energy Development triangle and its Arabic rendering beneath it. CCED hosted the 2020 Muscat engagement recorded elsewhere on this site. This visit was shorter: coffee in the place across the car park, the CC Energy sign visible through the glass, five years of catching up.

The trip ran 16 to 19 April 2025. The last Muscat frame is timestamped 05:33 on 19 April, in an aircraft cabin at Muscat International.

Nobody photographed the session in progress beyond the room itself. The rest of this chapter is Oman: the Hajar mountains and the wadis that are the reason an oil and gas company is here at all.

FROM THE FIELD · 12 FRAMES
A wall screen in Muscat carrying a red three-dimensional subsurface visualisation, the faceted blocks of a reservoir model.
A wall screen in Muscat carrying a red three-dimensional subsurface visualisation, the faceted blocks of a reservoir model.
A working session in the Desert Sand Oil & Gas meeting room, the wall screen carrying the variational autoencoder slide.
A working session in the Desert Sand Oil & Gas meeting room, the wall screen carrying the variational autoencoder slide.
Wadi Bani Khalid: turquoise water held between limestone walls, date palms along the bank.
Wadi Bani Khalid: turquoise water held between limestone walls, date palms along the bank.
The arid Hajar range outside Muscat, bare rock and scree running back in ridges.
The arid Hajar range outside Muscat, bare rock and scree running back in ridges.
Tarry Singh with a colleague at the Desert Sand Oil & Gas logo wall, under the strapline about being connected globally.
Tarry Singh with a colleague at the Desert Sand Oil & Gas logo wall, under the strapline about being connected globally.
The wadi pool from the bank, mountains behind and palms along the water.
The wadi pool from the bank, mountains behind and palms along the water.
Standing in front of the subsurface visualisation screen, the reservoir model lit in red behind.
Standing in front of the subsurface visualisation screen, the reservoir model lit in red behind.
On a viewpoint above the Hajar mountains, the folded ridges running away behind.
On a viewpoint above the Hajar mountains, the folded ridges running away behind.
The Salam Square South tenant directory, listing Desert Sand Oil & Gas on the fourth floor.
The Salam Square South tenant directory, listing Desert Sand Oil & Gas on the fourth floor.
CCED House in Muscat, the white block letters above the entrance carrying the CC Energy Development mark.
CCED House in Muscat, the white block letters above the entrance carrying the CC Energy Development mark.
Two colleagues in the office in Muscat at the end of the working session.
Two colleagues in the office in Muscat at the end of the working session.
MATERIALS
Generative models notes

Session material served live from a working notes site, visible on the meeting room screen: the VAE evidence lower bound and a section on generative adversarial networks.

WITH
Desert Sand Oil & GasCC Energy Development (CCED)
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