The way in which oil and gas companies rallied together in order to respond to Covid-19 has been held up as a “great example” of collaboration in the industry.
Graeme Gordon, vice-president of North Sea production at BP, said “within hours” of the pandemic becoming “real offshore”, people from across the sector were working together to draw up solutions.
That included operators sharing helicopters in order to get offshore crew with Covid symptoms safely back to shore.
Mr Gordon said the reaction shows what can be achieved when different facets of the industry get round the same table.
Since the 2014 downturn, energy bosses have been calling for increased collaboration in order to drive different, more efficient ways of working.
And that message is likely to continue on for many years as companies try to decarbonise and adapt to become part of the energy transition.
The rhetoric hasn’t always translated into reality though, and industry regulator the Oil and Gas Authority recently opened an investigation into North Sea operators failing to collaborate.
But Mr Gordon underlined that there have been examples of the industry sharing ideas and resources.
He said: “I remember back last March, April when it started to become real offshore and suddenly there were people with symptoms. We got into a collaborative environment around how do we share helicopters to get people safely back.
“Everybody was used to using having their own helicopters but suddenly operators were sharing and the whole industry shaped itself really quickly around something.
“We didn’t know where it was going, we didn’t know how long it was going to last, there were cost aspects but actually, it was such a drive that lots of people collaborated, literally within hours, to get a solution. We shaped that with different people sharing different resources.”
Mr Gordon shared the “great example” of collaboration during the ‘Brave, Bold, and Better: Breaking the Silo Paralysis’ session at Offshore Europe on Thursday.
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