Excitement around the booming subsea industry saw record crowds flock to this year’s Subsea 2012 conference and exhibition, held in Aberdeen yesterday and Wednesday.
The event attracted more than 3,000 people to Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre, beating last year’s record by more than 700.
Organiser Subsea UK said next year’s event would be bigger again. Its chief executive, Neil Gordon, said: “The buzz around the place has been so positive. It was a hive of people talking and the feedback has been fantastic.”
He said the number of international visitors was also up, while a UK Trade and Industry networking event had seen “some real business being done”.
The theme of this year’s conference was “reaching further and going deeper”, reflecting oil majors going further into deeper and harsher environments as they tried to replace fast depleting reserves.
Mr Gordon said: “Big operators are going into new frontiers and looking more and more at subsea technology. The investment needed just to maintain the same level of production demand is going to go up and further growth relies heavily on subsea.”
He said the UK continental shelf had about 30-40% of subsea production but that was going to rise to about 70% in the future.
Roddy James, director of Stork Technical Services Subsea, said: “Subsea 2012 has been a great exhibition for us. There is a real buzz about the industry and we are confident that 2012 will be our busiest year yet.”