Reinvention dictates shedding the industry’s conservative skin, according to Offshore Europe chairman Catherine MacGregor.
The Schlumberger drilling group president, who began her career in the Congo in 1995, will lead the conference as it dissects the theme ‘New Realities and Reinvention’.
“We are at the very beginning of that reinvention,” she said.
“For the past two years, the industry has made progress on thinking about reinvention and we’ve had a lot of talk about reinvention with some actions, but I think to everyone’s omission there is so much more we can do. I think it’s true in the UK and the rest of the world.
“In our industry, we are very conservative. It’s very understandable given the type of risk we have to manage and it’s even more true here in the North Sea. But that has slowed us down quite a bit in terms of adoption of technology.
“When you look at the digital in our everyday world, and if you look at its adoption in the oil and gas sector, we are clearly behind.
“There are massive opportunities out there and I think the current environment makes it a compelling argument for us to adopt them.
“I think it will also help us make our industry more attractive for the future workers, so there is a compelling economic element, but there is also a compelling talent element.”
The conference will host 11 keynote sessions, including one on digital disruption and big data.
Catherine hopes it will narrow the industry’s focus on not only how to leverage data but also capture the imagination of the “digital native” newcomers.
“I call the emerging workforce digital native talent,” Catherine said.
“We are just getting to the first generation, who really know nothing but digital. The way they work and think is very different, so when they come to an organisation, which has been designed for non-digital native people by non-digital native people it’s going to be very interesting.”
Simply put, Catherine insists the industry has “work to do” when it comes to its recruitment strategy.
Digital can transform not only the type of workforce the sector attracts, but also the quantity, according to the industry leader.
“We are going to need to continue to recruit, but there are ways of working that companies are looking at, which will mitigate the potential skills dilution.
“For example, the technology intro removes the operation facility on some rigs. It means you have less experts offshore, which means you can have more onshore and therefore better utilised across a greater concentration of rigs.
“We will have to work to ensure if we are short on skills, like we have been in the past, we don’t suffer from an operability standpoint.
“In fact, you could argue that this is a pretty good model to turn to where expertise is better utilised across a wider variety of activity.”
The appetite for change has never been more ripe in the North Sea, according to the Schlumberger boss.
“After three years of under-investment, people are starting to talk about it again,” she said.
“That’s an environment in which we are very excited to be planning the conference. We will probably not see an environment of $100 per barrel any time soon, so this environment of current oil price is likely to stay. It all describes this new reality.
“The new reality of the North Sea is the fact that the cost base has been a huge focus.
“Throughout this downturn there has been fantastic effort from all players to look at the way they were working, managing projects and how they work with suppliers in order to establish a more sustainable way forward.
“There’s been some good success there.
“It has been a very difficult time, but I think that operators this time have not just gone ahead and cut costs. They have done that, but they have also looked at working differently.”
She added: “I think the cyclicality of the industry was put on the side for a while, but I also think that as an industry we forgot about the costs in our equations, which made some operators very early on, even before the downturn started, raise alarms that the offshore development started to be un-economic even at $100 per barrel. In a way, the writing was on the wall.
“In the end, the economics always catch up with you.”
The ability to do more than just slash and burn is critical to how the sector emerges, according to Catherine.
“I would love to see the industry bounce back, but it’s very important the industry remains in tune with the reality around it.
“The new reality we are in is not in line with an incredibly steep upturn.
“There are aspects that work for other industries and it is incredibly obvious where we are falling behind,” Catherine said.
She pointed towards the logistics sector for inspiration.
“The viability and economic challenges for logistics are huge and also the pace of transformation and technology changes can have a massive impact on that industry,” she said.
“We are looking at some of the traditional players at the conference to see how they weathered those changes, including the emergence of the mega-players like the Amazons of the world. We’re interested in how those traditional players are adapting to those new threads and environments. There is a very dynamic environment right now in the North Sea with M&A activity and a lot of assets changing hands. The North Sea is one of the most mature basins in the world. It has proved over its tenure its ability to continuously evolve.”
That history of evolution must be repurposed and marketed, on a global scale, as the North Sea’s greatest strength, according to the OE chairman.
“The UK is always on the forefront of a lot of things for our global industry,” she said.
“It has been a pioneer in offshore exploration, a pioneer in offshore development and again it will be a pioneer in decommissioning.
“A lot of places, which are going through these offshore development cycles, are looking up to the UK.
“That’s why we must showcase what the UK can do in these domains. That’s one of the great things about Offshore Europe, we are showing what the UK can do to the rest of the world.
“Because the UK is what the future looks like for many other basins. The legacy of the North Sea has to be about its fantastic level of expertise, its technology, which is being used around the world, all of which was dreamt up in Aberdeen.
“That’s it’s legacy, which has been true from the North Sea’s beginning, that all of that knowledge and expertise lives on in the rest of the world.”
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