Offshore Growth

John Donnelly, JPT Editor • jdonnelly@spe.org

Another Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) has come and gone, and the numbers from this year’s event were impressive. Attendance topped 67,000—a 25-year high—with more than 300 technical papers presented. The exhibit expanded for the first time into Reliant Stadium, and more outdoor exhibit space was added. Not since the early 1980s has OTC been this big. The high-water mark was 1982, when more than 108,000 people attended and 2,500 companies exhibited. OTC’s technical program has improved markedly since then. Fewer than half the number of technical papers presented this year were delivered at the conference 25 years ago.

OTC was successful from the start. In 1968, the SPE Board of Directors voted to help establish a new conference, held in conjunction with 11 other societies, focusing on the growing offshore industry. As the industry was looking increasingly offshore for new sources of oil, SPE realized its responsibility to provide a forum for dissemination of technology information. The first conference, held in a downtown Houston convention hall in 1969, exceeded expectations, attracting 4,200 registrants and 368 exhibitors.

At the end of the conference, the OTC Executive Committee, made up of representatives from the 12 sponsoring organizations, decided to return to Houston the next year for the second OTC, which had been scheduled for New Orleans, and it has remained in Houston since. Each year, OTC attracted more professionals and more exhibits—tracking the growth of the global offshore industry—and by 1975, attendance had risen to 40,000 and the conference was expanded from 3 days to 4. An article featuring the highlights of this year’s OTC begins on page 34.

Not long after the startup of OTC, a new offshore conference was launched in Europe that also would become part of SPE’s stable of well-known events. The first Offshore Europe conference was held in 1971 in Great Yarmouth, Scotland, under the name “Oiltech.” It also became a highly successful event, at first focusing primarily on the exciting developments occurring in the North Sea’s emerging oil industry. Now, it covers the issues and challenges confronting the entire offshore industry. This year’s conference, to be held in September in Aberdeen, features technical presentations and panels on a range of technology, environmental, and people topics. An article previewing that conference can be found on page 42.

What has driven this interest in the offshore business these past 3-plus decades is the need for more hydrocarbons and the advances in technology that make them accessible. Man’s age-old battle with the sea is well-documented in literature, art, and business. It continues today as firms contend with hurricanes, greater water depths, and other immense challenges to try to satisfy the world’s growing appetite for fuel. Offshore oil production has risen by more than a third since 1991 and will continue rising at that same rate, according to a new forecast from Douglas-Westwood and Energyfiles. The industry’s annual spending on offshore activity is forecast to rise to USD 275 billion by 2011 from USD 219 billion last year. Garnering more than half of that spending together are three regions: the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea, and the South China Sea.