As the new session of SPE activities is about to start it is a time of reflection, renewal and anticipation, and I am very much looking forward to taking on the mantle as Aberdeen Section Chair for the year ahead.
SPE International is the world’s largest individual professional membership organisation and SPE Aberdeen is one its biggest sections. Our mission is to collect and disseminate technical knowledge associated with our industry. For SPE Aberdeen that means sharing knowledge that is pertinent for the UKCS basin and relevant to its members. We achieve this in many ways, including technical conferences and evening technical meetings, aimed at broad audiences as well as specifically targeted to Young Professionals.
The industry has been through some difficult years and outgoing Chair Ian Phillips performed the unenviable task of sailing the SPE Aberdeen ship through the choppy waters of the last four years, when the industry’s ability to support education not-for-profits such as the SPE have been severely tested.
Like the other survivors in the industry, SPE Aberdeen has looked more intensely at our core purpose and the costs to deliver our programmes. We are emerging from the downturn fitter and better serving our varied audiences. SPE Aberdeen has assembled a record number of technical conferences responding to the local industry’s desire to continue learning and sharing without the cost of international travel. Fittingly, our last ever conference hosted at the AECC focused on decommissioning – wells in this case, but the AECC had its own decommissioning project shortly thereafter. The first conference of the new session will look at the new and novel – the SPE Aberdeen Inwell Monitoring & Surveillance Seminar 2019 will concentrate on applying the gifts of the data age to the search and recovery of prehistoric resources.
Looking forward, the energy market is changing and so is the public view of the oil and gas industry. It is not the role of the SPE to engage or comment on the government policy. That said, our members will be sharing technical information at conferences around some of the key areas of fracturing, emissions targets, North Sea gas as a feed stock for hydrogen as a fuel, maximising economic recovery from the North Sea and how to safely decommission infrastructure and wells.
If you would like to volunteer in SPE Aberdeen and get involved in our conferences, evening technical meetings, student chapters, schools careers guidance team or any aspect, we are holding a launch event on August 28th – see www.spe-aberdeen.org for details.
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