Industry leader Sir Ian Wood said a “disruptive mindset” was needed by the oil and gas sector to inspire better collaboration amongst operators and the supply chain.
The businessman was speaking at the Oil & Gas UK 2016 conference in a session chaired by EnQuest chief executive Neil McCulloch.
He was joined by other members of the industry including the Oil and Gas Authority’s Angela Sweeney in a discussion about technology transfers.
Speaking after the event to Energy Voice, Sir Ian Wood said the mindset of the oil and gas industry had “unconsciously” previously been to be competitive.
However, he said at a recent dinner with other industry leaders he had noticed a shift in attitudes towards collaboration.
He said: “I’ve been to a dinner which one of the key themes was collaboration. We’re starting down a new road, we’ve got a really good new regulator and I heard some of the most senior people in the industry saying quite clearly this is the way we’ve got to go.
“I heard the beginning of mindset changes from very senior people saying yes we will be better off doing it this way and we’re prepared to do it this way.”
Sir Ian Wood said recent figures released by Oil & Gas UK which showed up to 120,000 indirect and direct jobs are expected to be lost by the end of the year were “not surprising”.
He added:”That’s a horrible number of jobs across the UK to be lost I hope we’re now in a slowing down though, not fast slowing down but beginning to slow down and I hope when we do the sums next year we’ll be looking at a much smaller number of jobs lost, there will be more jobs lost in the next 12 months I think the really important part is we’ve got to keep the bridges to get us through that to minimise the loss and keep as many people as we can.
“The other thing is when the turnaround comes all the signs are it’s going to be slow. I don’t think we’re going to have a quick rebound back to anywhere where we were before I’m not sure we’ll ever get back to where we were before but we will get back to investment and positive issues taking place. We mustn’t make the mistakes of the past, we must avoid this boom and bust that has beleaguered the industry the whole time and I think there’s the beginning of some good conversations taking place.
“I think it’s going to be late 2017 before we see some positive signs.”
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