With a focus on industry challenges, the annual offshore extravaganza in Houston will include a world-class exhibition and a look at the E&P industry of the future.    

The offshore oil and gas industry is advancing into new frontiers, both geographically and technologically, at a faster pace than ever before. The challenges of safely and responsibly exploring for and producing hydrocarbons from remote, harsh environment, deep, and ultra-deep waters around the world have never been greater.

On behalf of Hart Energy we are delighted to welcome you to Houston, the world’s undisputed offshore energy hub, and we look forward to seeing you at the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC).

OTC is the foremost event on the E&P industry’s annual calendar. It plays a pivotal role for the thousands working in the offshore sector by facilitating the sharing of the latest technical advances and lessons learned through a multidisciplinary technical conference program; an agenda-setting series of plenary, panel, breakfast, and lunch presentations; and a world-class exhibition.

The timing this year couldn’t be better. As offshore E&P activity in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM)  ramps up to a higher level than that achieved before the Macondo tragedy of 2010, OTC 2012 is looking not only at the post-spill deepwater GoM but much further afield.

There will be a series of presentations by major international oil companies, national oil companies (NOCs), and independents throughout the week giving different insights into future industry directions, operational integrity, and risk management.

With presentations by senior executives from state-owned majors such as China’s CNOOC and the United Arab Emirates’s ADNOC, the increasingly proactive role of cash-rich NOCs both within and outside of their own borders will be highlighted, while established majors such as ExxonMobil, Total, and Shell will be focusing on their own global upstream strategies in a changing political and regulatory environment and against a backdrop of cautious economic energy policy.

There will also be several talks and presentations specifically on the aftermath of the Macondo oil spill, with luminaries such as Martin Vos of Shell who will give a luncheon talk titled, “Follow the Risk: Process Safety Developments in Shell Deepwater Wells.” There also is a technical session on “Enhancing Industry Spill Response Capabilities” and two panel discussions, “Risk Management Strategies for Deepwater Exploration and Development” and “Improving Operational Integrity in Offshore Energy Operations: A Global Perspective.”

The scale of offshore field developments globally also continues to grow, and several world-class projects will be in the spotlight at this year’s show, including Tullow Oil’s giant Jubilee development offshore Ghana, Petrobras’ Marlim field offshore Brazil, and Total’s Pazflor project offshore Angola.

These projects have employed many innovative technologies, including deepwater subsea gas and liquid separation at Pazflor and deepwater subsea heavy oil-water separation at Marlim.  

Other technological trends being showcased at OTC include Shell’s huge investments in advancing floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) solutions at mega-projects such as its multi-billion dollar Prelude FLNG development offshore Australia. FLNG is emerging to become a key technology enabler allowing the exploitation of remote offshore gas resources around the world that previously were uneconomical to produce.

Other key offshore trends to be featured at the event include advances in floating production and offshore offloading solutions, deepwater construction equipment challenges, drilling wells at more than 15,000 psi, subsea monitoring, deepwater cementing, moorings, pipelines, flexible pipe, and flow assurance.

If anyone wants to look further ahead, there’s a panel session that will attempt to predict what the offshore oil and gas world will look like in the year 2030, a task that many will say is impossible but at the same time vital to tackle strategically. With leading panellists from ExxonMobil Development Co., Total, Woodside Energy, and Petrobras, it can be safely predicted that this will be a session well worth attending!

Anyone wanting to hear a slightly different angle on the energy industry of the future may also be interested in another panel session that will be dedicated to alternative energy, an area with many direct technology overlaps with the offshore oil and gas sector. With experts discussing which technologies have the most potential, the allocation of investments, the likely timelines for the leading technologies to become commercially viable, and their contribution to the overall global energy balance, this is a topic that would be ignored at the industry’s peril.

Whatever your aims at OTC, we wish you a successful and enjoyable trip to Houston!