Saudi Aramco – King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) workshop on technical challenges to exploring the Red Sea drawing more than 100 participants from Saudi Aramco’s Exploration organization and academics and laboratory directors from KAUST, highlighting the strong scientific collaboration between the two parties. Tremendous efforts are made by the company for a holistic understanding and evaluation of a large underexplored area. Rough sea-floor topography and complicated geology under thick salt deposits make the Red Sea one of the most intriguing areas for hydrocarbon exploration in the world. A particular challenge is to preserving the fragile balance of the Red Sea’s pristine ecosystem. In the opening remarks, vice president of Aramco’s Exploration Department, Ibraheem M. Assa’adan, said: “We think the Red Sea is a key, underexplored region that has the potential to meet the Western Region’s demand for oil and gas, but there are special technical challenges. This is where the relationship with KAUST comes in. It is a partnership in which we can achieve common goals of advancing our knowledge of technologies and developing the full potential of the Red Sea’s resources to meet local demand.” Topics during the workshop included seismic and sub-salt imaging technologies; visualization and supercomputing; rift, crust, and mantle models that shaped up the Red Sea; active faults and volcanism; bioactivity; heat flow and hydrocarbon seeps in the Red Sea; and integrated observations of ecology.