About 100 oil and gas industry contractors are today taking part in what the host, Centrica Energy, has described as a “hackathon” of ideas aimed at reducing the costs for projects that are stuck in the pipeline.
The term is more usually used for gatherings of software developers and programmers, where they get together to look at problems and figure out how to solve them.
Centrica Energy hopes today’s event in Aberdeen will deliver new ways to approach some of its oil and gas projects, using new technologies which “might make the difference” between them going ahead or not in the currently difficult operating climate for North Sea firms.
Colette Cohen, the firm’s senior vice-president for the UK and the Netherlands, called it “a great opportunity for us to work collaboratively with our partners in the supply chain to identify innovative ways of working and allow us to unlock the remaining potential in the North Sea”.
She said: “Centrica is one of the leading gas producers in the North Sea. To maintain that position and ensure that we can deliver safe sustainable operations, we need to be competitive – even in a low price environment.”
A spokesman for the company added: “Rather than set it up so that our contractors come and sell their wares to us, we’re making it more collaborative.
“It’s being led by our projects director, Myrtle Dawes, and she sees it as a hackathon – where we give the contractors a problem and they spend the day working together to figure out how to solve it.
“We’ll be focusing on three key areas – new developments, drilling, and potential decommissioning projects – and then we’ll continue working with these companies in the months and years ahead to work up the ideas in more detail and use them to push through some of our projects.”
Ms Dawes said: “There has never been a better time for us to host this kind of event, which will help us find transformational ways of working with our partners.
“The industry needs to work together if we want to maximise the potential of the North Sea, and bringing together experts from across the supply chain is a chance for us to overcome the challenges the sector faces.”
Contractors taking part range from large firms such as Amec Foster Wheeler and Halliburton to smaller companies like Axis Well Technology and Merlin ERD.
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