The chairman of Offshore Europe has hailed this year’s event as the most successful ever – but says thinks moving the event to an annual schedule would be a step too far.
More than 63,000 people attended this year’s event at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre, smashing the previous attendance record of 48,000 set at the 2011 expo.
But UK Oil and Gas chief executive Malcolm Webb, who chaired the conference this year for the first time, says making the event a more regular one may not be the right move forward.
“As I understand it, we’ve broken all records,” he told Energy Voice.
“We’ve had more exhibitors in the exhibition than ever before, but I understand there’s been over 60,000 attendees, that’s just smashed the record. Last time was about 48,000 and the organisers tell me it’s over 60,000 this time.
“Besides that we’ve had this tremendous conference programme, we’ve doubled the size of the conference and it’s played to capacity audiences all the way through.
“But this takes an awful lot of organising, when I think what we’ve done on the panel sessions and the keynote sessions, that would be asking an awful lot of people to do that every year.
“Maybe it’s better to have a very high impact event like this every two years.”
This year saw the organisers stage the first Energy Festival during the evenings of Offshore Europe, with live music, photo exhibitions and a football match.
Whatever the future for the festive, Mr Webb believes it needs to engage with the people of Aberdeen to a far greater extent.
“I have this fear sometimes that Offshore Europe, to the average Aberdonian, is just the week when you can’t get a hotel, you can’t get a flight and you can’t move around the city very much,” he said.
“I think it can be a huge amount more than that. It can be a huge opportunity for us to say thank you to the city and its citizens for hosting us. It’s home for our industry here in the UK and the tentative step we took this time to open up with the festival is a good one.
“We need to make much bolder steps going forward from here.”
See our full interview with Malcolm Webb below
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