Spring means many things in Houston — the return of muggy weather, the beginning
of another Astros baseball season, the purchase of antihistamines by the city’s many allergy sufferers.

Since 1969, it’s also meant the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC).

Those unfamiliar with the oil industry might not be particularly aware of this conference. But industry insiders know that it’s not just a conference, it’s an institution. Not only is it one of

Figure 1. The show was humming in 1976 but would grow even larger by the early 1980s. (Photos courtesy of Barchfield Photography)
the largest petroleum-related conventions in the world, it also boasts the participation of no fewer than nine professional societies and two endorsing industry associations, including such diverse groups as the Society of Exploration Geophysicists and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. It covers more than 400,000 sq ft in Reliant Center along with additional space in the parking lot and, for the first time this year, in Reliant Stadium, home of the Houston Texans US football team. Attendance at the 2006 OTC was more than 59,000, and in the early 1980s it surpassed the 100,000 mark.

Over the years OTC has shared a reputation with its host state for “bigger is better.” But it must have seemed like an oversized challenge even by Texas standards when it was first announced in 1968. Back then nine of the leading engineering and scientific societies in the United States established the concept of a new interdisciplinary meeting. Between them they boasted about 370,000 members. A paper announcing the formation of the conference that year noted of these societies, “Their combined activities and technical strength represent a major part of the engineering and scientific capability of the US.”

Their varying interests also made for a wide-ranging technical program. The paper determined that subject areas for conference programs in future years would include geology, geophysics, ocean environment, weather, offshore platforms and structures, drilling barges and vessels, drilling rigs and operations, subsea well completions, mechanical design and equipment, metallurgy, electronics and instrumentation, communications, oil and gas production, pipelines, subsea operations, ocean mining, industrial minerals and metallic ores, chemical processing, food supplements, corrosion, air and water transportation, logistic, economics and finance, and organization and management. Whew.

The fact that the conference focused on offshore technology is also significant. The offshore industry was considered “born” in 1947, when Kerr-McGee drilled the first offshore oil well out of sight of land. Twenty years later the industry had made huge strides, but drilling in a few hundred feet of water was really pushing the limits of existing technology. Into this backdrop on May 19, 1969, OTC was born.

Gordon Sterling was there. He had been with Shell 4 years at the time and remembers that the first conference was held at the Albert Thomas Convention Center in downtown Houston. “To a relatively new engineer … it was an exciting event,” Sterling, later OTC chairman, recalled. “People who were well-known in the industry were there to present papers — from academia, from contractors, from oil and companies and from consulting companies. It was the beginning of a more open and professional sharing of relevant and non-proprietary experiences and engineering data … on matters of extreme importance to the burgeoning offshore oil and gas industry.”

But it wasn’t particularly big, at least not by later standards. Sterling estimated that perhaps 4,000 people registered, and a few hundred companies exhibited. That would change. Within a few years the conference was moved to the Houston Astrodome to house the growing number of participants along with the ever-increasing size of the exhibits.

George Zuckero started working the show for Sullivan Transfer in the 1970s and spent years
Figure 2. A Cadrill display grabs attention at the 1995 show.
setting up and tearing down sometimes gigantic exhibits. “We used to have a lot of major machinery,” he said. “In the ’70s and early ’80s we’d actually construct derricks. We’d do seven or eight of them a year. And we’d put up the major Christmas trees. The freight was just unbelievable.” He added that foreign exhibitors shipped their equipment to the conference in sea containers, and often his crew would unload as many as 35 of these containers before the show.

The Astrodome was home to some of the larger equipment in those days, and Zuckero said there was kind of a competition to see who could fit the largest piece of equipment inside the domed stadium. “The thing that would stop them is how high we could get a crane to go before we couldn’t get it under the ceiling,” he said. “That was the challenge. Sometimes we’d have to use two cranes to get something up in the center of the dome.”

Another challenge was late arrivals. One company brought in a helicopter at the last minute, and Zuckero’s crew had to remove the rotors to push it past the other exhibits.

Then there was the tear-down. The conference was sharing space with the Houston Astros US baseball team, and Zuckero noted that they always seemed to have a home game the Saturday after OTC ended. “It was a challenge to get everything out on time,” he said.
For the exhibitors themselves, the challenge was to put on a good show without bankrupting the company in the process. James Garner, global sales support manager with Schlumberger’s Completions, has been going to OTC for 33 years and has been in charge
of the Camco booth (now owned by Schlumberger) since 1987. He said that during the late ’70s and early ’80s, when attendance was hovering at 100,000, the show was really too big.
“Back then we really only saw about 200 or 300 ‘real’ customers,” he said. “It was all about getting bigger and who could be the tallest. It wasn’t buying us a lot.”

Companies like Schlumberger have scaled back on the “bigger is better” aspect over the years. But while the scale of the exhibits may have been toned down, the quality of the technology has only continued to improve. Garner said he’s enjoyed watching the progression of offshore technology over the years.

“During the 1970s and 1980s, offshore was really starting to take off, and all of the offshore-related technology was there,” he said. “Companies would have everything from the housing units for offshore platforms to the downhole tools with new drilling techniques and subsurface safety valves. Then we started looking at multilateral drilling and subsea trees. As things progressed and the industry moved farther offshore, the technologies that were developed for each phase of the industry were interesting to watch.”

Sterling, whose background is in ocean engineering and project management, recalled several technologies over the years that he found sensational, including S-lay pipeline ships, marine construction vessels, and the tension-leg and Spar platform concepts. He also remembers advances made in probabilistic analysis of dynamics and fatigue, wave height and wave force calculation methods, and dynamic positioning theory and practice.
Sterling added that while the size and scope of the show may have changed over the years, the general purpose has not. “OTC has been a showcase for both the proven and the new, both in the exhibits and the technical sessions,” he said. “The details have changed considerably over the years, but the basic philosophy has remained.”

He added that the major topics of interest in the early years were more technical in nature — waves, winds, structural dynamics, etc. — but over time an interest in areas and regions has taken hold. “A session on doing business in Russia or someplace similar is now often a big attendance draw,” he said. Other well-attended sessions are those that showcase a recent major project such as Exxon-Mobil’s Kizomba project. “This is a technology transfer event as well as a public relations opportunity,” he noted.

Current OTC Chairman Arnis Judzis said he’s proud to be a part of OTC this year, when the offshore industry celebrates its 60th anniversary. This year more than 2,300 exhibitors will fill up Reliant Center, Reliant Stadium, an outdoor pavilion and a ton of parking space. The exhibits alone are the equivalent of more than 13 football fields. The technical program will include a general session on OPEC as well as a session on national and integrated oil companies.

“OTC is unique in that it brings together so many professional societies and produces a quality program,” Judzis said. “It’s very successful, it’s worldwide and it covers a diverse
audience.”