Three top figures from the UK’s offshore oil and gas industry joined Chancellor George Osborne at the opening plenary of Offshore Europe yesterday.
And each, Sam Laidlaw of Centrica, Bob Keiller of Wood Group PSN and Andrew Gould of BG Group, mapped out their views of key issues and what the future might hold for the industry.
Mr Laidlaw said the first Offshore Europe conference that he attended was back in 1987 when he was with Amerada Hess and developing the Ivanhoe/Rob Roy and Scott fields at the time.
“Oil prices had just recovered to the dizzy height of $18 per barrel from the slump of the previous year,” said Mr Laidlaw.
“Even-so, the heyday of the North Sea was already thought to be well and truly over. But here we are more than 25 years later with an industry that has confounded the sceptics and gone from strength to strength.
“It shows that confident predictions can be well wide of the mark; and we should bear that in mind when setting out the perspective for the next 50 years.”
However, he added: “It is probably not an overstatement to say that we’re experiencing a once-in-a-generation shift in global energy markets due to a variety of factors … LNG, shale production and a new pricing dynamic.”
In his wide-ranging address, Mr Gould said increasing the level of oil and gas recovery from existing fields where the wellheads are subsea was becoming a critical issue, especially deepwater.
“Recovery factors from subsea developments are known to be significantly lower than from dry (conventional) wellheads,” he said.
Mr Gould warned that despite efforts made so far, intervention of subsea wellheads will remain more expensive than platform intervention.
Mr Gould lauded Statoil for the efforts made so far to create the so-called “subsea factory” and said the North Sea was still the ideal proving ground for these technologies.
Mr Keiller put human factors at the heart of his address – both safety and well-being.
Referring to the August 23 helicopter crash he said: “As an industry we face many safety challenges and I have no doubt we will come through this most recent challenge.
“In fact we don’t have a choice. As an industry we need to remember we’re in the business of supply energy. Energy is all about improving the quality of improving peoples’ quality of life,” said Mr Keiller.
Mr Keiller talked about the difficulties of international work, notably corruption.
“Some parts of the world are too dangerous for us to do business.
“You can’t send people into areas where they’re likely to get hurt, kidnapped or even worse.”
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