“It’s devastating for us. We’re a small trade organisation and it takes us a year to plan this,” says Simon Gray, chief executive of East of England Energy Group (EEEGR).
After initially deciding to cancel day one, the group has now called off the entire Southern North Sea Conference in Norwich.
Many delegates have failed to make it in to the event, after severe snow storms struck the region overnight.
Speaking before the decision to cancel the full event, Mr Gray added: “To have it end up like this is awful. All we can hope for is that at midday today we have another situation report and have a look at conditions and consider whether tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s event still goes ahead or not.
“We still have a number of people from the industry that are all here staying at various hotels around the place and they are stuck here now, we may be able to use them tomorrow if the weather is sufficiently good.
“As ever with our industry safety is our first priority and if it is not safe to do so we probably won’t put tomorrow on.
“Gutted, but there we are.”
With around 1200 delegates planning to attend the event, this was to be the largest conference ever arranged by EEEGR.
Mr Gray was one of the speakers who would help open the SNS Conference.
He gave Energy Voice a taste of what was planned to be discussed.
“We’ve got a number of special interest groups, we have the southern north sea rejuvenation group which is looking at a number of opportunities in the region.
“There is this tight gas opportunity to play for in the SNS and that looks to have great potential, Kathy Heller from Shell leads that particular group.
“Also lots of small pool stuff available out there and we were looking at gas-to-wire technologies and power-to-gas.
“Anything up to 15% of a gas platforms’ gas is used to generate energy on that platform so to power a gas platform from an offshore windfarm is a really interesting and novel way of looking to the future.
“Also looking at logistics of how offshore wind and oil and gas might work more closely together such as training, sharing of SOVs, turning old gas platforms into accomodation platforms.
“We have our marine group, which is looking at a project Our Land Under the Sea. Trying to persuade the government to map out the entire UK Continental Shelf. It is often said we know more about the surface of the moon than our own seabed.
“There’s lots and lots of novel ideas and presentations, we hope we might be able to do some of those tomorrow.
“If not we’ll be back again next year and in the meantime we’re looking at events in March or probably in April now with the OGA for a supply chain share fair here in the southern North Sea and also probably a meeting of our southern North Sea rejuvenation group as well.
“There’s still lots to go on and we’re still remaining very positive for the future.”
The group says it will be in touch with paying delegates after they cancelled the entire conference.
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