Attendance at last week’s 2009 Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston reached 66,820 despite a global economic recession and initial concerns about swine flu.
Energy professionals from more than 120 countries met at the world’s largest offshore resources industry event, reflecting a strong exhibition and conference performance in a year when travel budgets are being scrutinised more closely than ever.
Attendance was down a little on 2008, but exceeded industry expectations. A strengthening oil price environment no doubt prompted many to make a last minute dash to Houston. Oil closed last week at $58.64, up 10% in just two weeks.
The 2009 exhibition was the second largest in OTC’s 40-year history, with more than 557,000 square feet of exhibition area filled to capacity by 2,500 companies from 38 countries.
“This year’s attendance levels underscore that in a downturn, energy professionals come to OTC to learn about technologies and innovative approaches to reduce their costs and improve performance. OTC is known for presenting new and proven technologies that will help companies find and produce more oil and gas in deeper waters, and for sharing lessons learned on global projects that advance the offshore industry,” said Don Vardeman, 2009 OTC chairman.
Thierry Pilenko, chairman and CEO of Technip, added that the challenge in a lower oil price environment is to reduce costs while preserving human capital. “We can stack rigs, but we cannot stack people,” he said. “We must avoid the ‘stop and go’ attitude which is detrimental to our industry’s image, and continue to hire university graduates to avoid future generation gaps and maintain credibility.” Pilenko was the guest luncheon speaker at the OTC Awards.
