OTC Sessions Confront Technical, Human Challenges Facing Industry

Abstract

A healthy oil and gas industry fueled by high commodity prices provided the backdrop to a record-setting Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston. The annual event posted a 20-year high in attendance at 51,320 and attracted more than 2,000 exhibiting companies (Fig. 1). Amid the upbeat mood of an industry enjoying profitable times, speakers at the conference offered a clear-eyed view of the challenges confronting an industry that needs to produce more hydrocarbons to satisfy thirsty global demand. Peter J. Robertson, Vice Chairman of Chevron Corp., laid out those challenges in his keynote address at the OTC Awards Luncheon, including surging demand Robertson growth, geopolitical instability, increasingly complex projects, and consumer demand for cleaner fuels with minimal environmental impact. “To me the interesting part is that none of these items are particularly new, but the volume on all of them has been turned up and the combined effects of all of them operating in unison is putting a strain on our collective capabilities,” he said. Those challenges will require huge financial investments. Robertson said that Chevron’s “big 5” upstream projects include three technically challenging deepwater developments in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), Nigeria, and Angola; the expansion of the Tengiz field in Kazakhstan; and the Greater Gorgon project in Australia that includes two 5-million-ton liquefied natural gas (LNG) trains and a carbon sequestration project. But the real test for the industry may not be in locating and developing hydrocarbons, but in finding and developing highly skilled technical people “to carry out all of this work,” he said. The average age of Chevron’s U.S. work force is 47, he said. “Just as more and more of our hydrocarbon resources are being sourced outside of the U.S. and Europe, in the future more and more of our people requirements will be sourced in other parts of the world where there are large numbers of talented, energetic, and interested young work forces—in Southeast Asia, the Former Soviet Union, Latin America, the Middle East, and in Africa,” he said. At the awards banquet, 2005 Distinguished Achievement Awards were presented to J. Kim Vandiver, to Kerr-McGee Oil and Gas Corp., and to Technip. The award recognizes individuals, companies, and projects that have made outstanding contributions to the offshore industry. Vandiver, a professor of mechanical and ocean engineering at the Massachusetts Inst. of Technology, was honored for numerous technical breakthroughs in the dynamics of vortex-induced vibrations that have enhanced the design of structures to withstand high ocean currents. Kerr-McGee and Technip were cited for their successful global relationship that has pioneered and delivered three generations of spar floating production systems in the past decade.