Amec’s Europe group president, John Pearson, warned a packed conference hall at Offshore Europe yesterday that North Sea industry needs to forge a step change Initiative for technology.
Mr Pearson said it should mirror Step Change in Safety, which was forged more than a decade ago and which was also lauded for its efforts yesterday by Health & Safety Commission chair, Judith Hackett.
“I think technology is as much a collaborative topic as safety,” he told his audience.
“Maybe we need Step Change in Technology? I don’t have the answers; I’m just trying to stimulate conversation.
“But we’ve got to somehow address this reluctance to adopt new technology.
Mr Pearson said collaborations remained few and far between, except for the “occasional JIP” (joint industry project).
He said that operators and the supply chain should work together to identify key technology needs, then get on with delivering. Operator competing against operator and contractor versus contractor was counter-productive … damaging.
Moreover, he pointed out that so much of the burden for developing new technologies lies on the shoulders of the smallest companies with the smallest balance sheets.
And, having cracked a particular issue to the satisfaction of one major, there was no guarantee that another operator would be equally receptive, even though the issue was identical. Rather, said Mr Pearson, there was a big risk of rejection.
“We’re getting focused on production efficiency, but can you imagine if we measured innovation efficiency?” he asked. “It would be scary.
“If we believe that technology is central to our future, we’ve got to address the funding and risk apportionment through the supply chain in it’s entirely. And here I count operators as part of the supply chain, government too.
“But it’s not all doom and gloom. Look around. We are where we are (in the North Sea) because of amazing feats of technology.
“I’m not saying we’re bad; it’s very fashionable in Aberdeen to talk everything down … it’s too hot; it’s too sunny.
“I’m not trying to naysay our technology efforts of past years.
“But admiring the problem doesn’t get you to the solution.”
Crucially, Mr Pearson warned that technology development isn’t “philanthropy”.
“It’s a commercial enterprise.
“Crudely put, we need to de-risk a risky bet; we need to have the best brains and companies queueing up to develop technology because its good business; not philanthropy.”
Mr Pearson said he didn’t have the answers but, again pointing to Step Change in Safety, he said the things that have made the big strides in safety have been through collaboration and better application of effort. It was about real people delivering real results.
“In my experience, if you want to assure the outcome of something you need to come up with a smart plan and you need to put some really good people onto delivering that plan. It’s not often harder than that.”
Mr Pearson talked of a clearing house of needs, solutions and technologies … a super-Industry Technology Facility several notches up from the current one.
“We (Aberdeen) could be the silicon valley of oil and gas. Think of that!”
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