More industry leaders have come forward in support of an event aimed at ensuring the next generation of industry innovators move into the oil and gas sector.
Earlier this week it was revealed industry giant Sir Ian Wood would be joining an Energy Voice panel next month alongside Offshore Europe co-chairman Michael Engell-Jensen and Derek Leith, office managing partner at EY Aberdeen and the firm’s UK head of oil and gas taxation.
The move has been backed by the likes of UK Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom and Deirdre Michie.
The managing director at Craig Group, Douglas Craig, said it was imperative that more young people understood the significance of the energy industry.
Energy Voice has launched an event aimed at ensuring the next generation of industry innovators don’t get lost in translation amid a market downturn.
Industry giant Sir Ian Wood, Offshore Europe co-chairman Michael Engell-Jensen and Derek Leith, office managing partner
at EY Aberdeen and the firm’s UK head of oil and gas taxation, will all take part in the panel.
The event, which will be held at the Tivoli on Wednesday September 2, will discuss the final wave of Energy Voice’s research: Energy 2050 – Securing our Future.
Experts in well intervention are being called upon to submit an abstract on the topic and share the latest developments with their peers.
The findings will be shared at the annual SPEICoTA European Well Intervention Conference which takes place at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre in November.
A range of topics will be covered over two days, with a focus on new technology and innovative solutions, subsea fields, mature fields and challenging environments.
Energy Voice has launched the latest wave of its research aimed at gauging global sector perceptions.
Take part here.
The latest installment of ‘Energy 2050: Securing our future’ takes aim at the sector’s international ambitions .
The groundbreaking research led by Energy Voice, and done in partnership with EY, Robert Gordon University, FifthRing, Burness Paull and Douglas Westwood, is part of a year-long global initiative.
Energy Voice editor Rita Brown said: “This wave of the research will gauge the industry’s perception of what today’s new frontiers are – whether it’s the unknown of the Arctic, the emerging Asian production market, the African subcontinent or the UK’s own onshore potential. Energy 2050 will delve into the challenges, rewards and most importantly the tools needed to ensure the UK supply chain can export its abilities to the global market.”
The word which screams at me when reading the responses to the Energy 2050: Securing our future's research on technology is “opportunity”! The concept is one thing. Exploiting it is another.
With most survey responders holding the view that the current supply / demand imbalance is set to continue in the medium term, and as a consequence the oil price will remain in the $60 - $100 per barrel range, reducing the costs of recovery, particularly in the North Sea basin, will remain the principal focus.
It’s 12 months since the price of oil plunged from the high platform of $115 per barrel into a pool of uncertainty and confusion, and the ripple effect from that dive into the unknown has touched most of us in one way or another.
It’s appropriate that the results of the second Energy Voice survey are launched on the first anniversary of that descent. I say ‘first’ because nobody knows how long the current situation will last. However, we’ve all come to appreciate that the hope some of us had last summer of a rapid upswing in price to match the decline is not going to happen.
In the latest wave of findings from Energy 2050 - Securing our future, Energy Voice exclusively revealed the industry's sentiment around technology and development amid recent heightened sector pressures.
The findings covered everything from, which companies are tightening technology budgets, the predicted knock-on effects and who respondents felt should lead the R&D charge.
See all of the latest research findings in our interactive timeline below.
Exploration and production companies should be driving the industry’s technology development agenda, according to new findings.
In an exclusive, industry-wide Energy Voice research project, dubbed Energy 2050 – Securing our future, nearly half of respondents said E&P companies should be responsible for ensuring the industry’s ability to invent, prove and adapt new technology.
But despite the call for sector-wide E&P leadership, the research also revealed the industry has yet to shed its historical “race-to-be-second” technology adaptation mentality, with the majority of respondents admitting a reluctance to be first.
Everyone involved in the North Sea oil and gas sector will look back whimsically to a time when production was more than three times what it now is.
Back then, untapped reserves considerably outweighed historic extraction and all involved in the industry could comfortably expect production to see out their careers.
Notwithstanding price volatility, there was no pressing need to innovate and find new and clever ways to extract oil more cost effectively. Production could be extracted from more accessible fields with trusted technology.
Energy Voice has called on the global energy sector to participate in the second part of its landmark research launched to mark 50 years of oil and gas exploration in the North Sea.
The latest survey has gone live, just two weeks after the first findings from the project – dubbed Energy 2050-Securing our Future - were revealed at OTC in Houston.
In partnership with RGU, Burness Paull, EY, Douglas Westwood, Fifth Ring and the University of Oklahoma, this latest instalment will look at the sector's perceptions of technology and cost efficiencies.
Firms which flew the flag for Scotland at the world’s biggest oil and gas show are already reaping the rewards of taking part in the event.
Early feedback from 12 of the 58 companies supported by Scottish Enterprise (SE) to attend the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston in the US earlier this month shows they expect to increase their international exports by £50million over the next three years as a direct result.
Contracts were signed during the week for projects in the Gulf of Mexico and Brazil, while some of the firms received invitations to tender for other work around the world.
Professional services firm KPMG will discuss 'doing business' in the Middle East at an event in Aberdeen this week.
The seminar, held by tax leaders from the firm's offices in Oman, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait will explore opportunities and challenges to doing business in the region with a special focus on the oil and gas industry.
North Sea technology can leverage the many unknowns of an emerging Asian exploration market as the new frontier finds its footing, according to an industry leader.
Keith Palmer, Expro’s president of EPTI Overseas, sat down with Energy Voice fresh off his appointment in Bangkok, Thailand.
Palmer discussed the emerging Asian market in the wake of Energy Voice research which revealed the region to be one of the most sought international frontiers.
Palmer said now was a critical time for the North Sea to capitalise on a technology transfer.
As the latest survey goes live on Energy Voice, we've collected the first findings from the project, which were revealed at OTC 2015.
Energy Voice has called on the global energy sector to participate in the second part of its landmark research launched to mark 50 years of oil and gas exploration in the North Sea.
The project is a response to falling oil prices, which placed the UK and wider global energy market under pressure.
Have you ever heard the story of the ancient Chinese farmer?
You know the one that takes place far, far away in a rural community in ancient China.
You see back then a man’s worth wasn't measured by his monetary gains. Instead a man’s worth was determined by the amount of land, livestock and sons he had.
My farmer had one horse, one son and a big piece of land, so he was doing pretty good.
A robust exhibition for the oil and gas industry in Houston saw firms from across the world actively seeking solutions that will cut costs in the face of the oil price crash.
The Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) – the world’s biggest oil and gas show – drew to a close yesterday, with several north-east firms having attended and a number coming away with promising business leads.
With nervousness about the effect of oil prices remaining low pervading proceedings, most firms pitched up to NRG Park to show off technologies and services that would make subsea oil exploration cheaper.
Derek Smith, chief executive of Maritime Developments, came out a few days before the show started on Monday.
The Energy 2050 survey finds a roughly even split between those who see oil back over $100 per barrel by 2020, and those who see it trading in the (albeit rather wide) range of $60-100 per barrel.
Less than 10% of respondents expect prices to track under $60 per barrel.
Not unsurprisingly in the current environment much of the focus is on managing through the next five years, rather than the long-term dynamics of the industry.
A particular challenge remains for the higher-cost and mature areas like the North Sea where there is a clear need to address the cost, technology and ownership dynamics, but where confidence in the medium-term pricing environment is key to making the additional investments that are required to take advantage of the opportunities that still exist.
“Crude prices drop by 50% confronting the oil industry with major challenges”.
Sound familiar? If you have been in this industry for more than ten years, you’ve seen at least one, maybe as many as five or six, major crude price down turns.
Is this 1985? Or 1990? Or1998? Or 2008 again? Some things seem to be the same but to me something feels very different as well.
Can recent history help us understand what comes next or is this a “new frontier”?
First principles first – crude is a semi finite commodity. As a commodity, it is subject to significant price swings dependent upon demand changes or supply disruptions.
Much of the past major crude price increases have been driven by either major supply threats or actual disruptions – some intentional and other complete surprises.
“You can no longer solve the energy problem by ignoring the environment or solve the environment by ignoring energy.”
This was the sentiment of Business Opportunity Manager Bill Spence from Shell Upstream International as he spoke about the oil major’s
CCS (Carbon Capture Storage) project at All-Energy 2015.
He said there could be “no silver bullet” but that both the UK and Scotland – where the Peterhead Carbon Capture Storage project would be based – had begun to take an important lead.
Once completed, it would be the first full-scale CCS project on a gas-based power station.
Life might be tough in the oil & gas industry right now, but the chief upstream strategist at oilfield analysts IHS told OTC delegates at an OTC gathering that a staggering amount of new oil production was needed to meet forecast demand.
Bob Fryklund said that 50million barrels per day of additional production would be needed to meet projected demand by 2040 ... that’s about 55% more than today.
He said that it was possible to see about 20million barrels per day of that figure; after that it became more difficult to identify how the gap would be filled.
The oil industry must leverage the sector’s current down cycle if it wants to give itself a fighting chance for the future, industry leaders said at standout event at this year’s OTC.
It’s understandable, following a 50% drop in the price of oil between June last year and March 2015, that participants of Energy Voice’s ‘Energy 2050 – Securing Our Energy Future’ survey, expressed the ‘need to slash costs’ as the number one challenge for the oil and gas industry right now.
A renewables group focused on encouraging more women into the sector is looking for further funding options.
WiRES (Women in Renewables Energy Scotland) is looking at its next steps after funding from Close the Gap came to an end.
Dr Abbe Brown, from the Centre for Energy Law, the University of Aberdeen said more needed to be done to encourage women and people generally to take up STEM (Science, Technology Engineering and Maths) subjects and close the skills gap within the industry.
Global energy solutions provider Vergnet has set up a UK subsidiary as it looks to set up a British base.
The company, which s headquarterd in France, has installed a total of 28 wind turbines across the country.
The manufacturer of medium scale wind turbines will set up the base in Ripley, Derbyshire.
