Economic reality may be about to catch up with the proliferation of oil and gas related conferences around Europe.
Oil companies are starting to question the sizable financial commitment they make each year to dispatching high cost personnel to speak or absorb information at sites from Athens in the south to Tromso in the far north of Norway.
It's not only economics that may lead to a change in the pattern of conferences. There is a growing feeling in some parts of the research and development field that the multiplicity of specialist gatherings may not be the most efficient way of disseminating information throughout the industry.
TACKLING THE PROBLEM
This combination of economic pressure and intellectual unease bubbled to the surface at the first European Oil and Gas Conference held recently in Sicily, sponsored by the European Community (EC) and Agip SpA.
By the end of the 3 day session the organizing committee, made up of representatives from the EC, European oil companies, European academic institutions, and Society of Petroleum Engineers, had decided the time was right to tackle the problem.
The program in Sicily took a multidisciplinary approach to research and development in exploration and production. Sessions ranged from geosciences and information processing to mechanics and new materials and conversion of natural gas to liquids,
It was a format that pleased most of the delegates and one the organizing committee thought could form the basis of a new single European oil and gas conference that would replace some of the specialist gatherings.
Two committee members, Jacques Bosio, deputy research and development director and vice-president for technical cooperation at Ste. Nationale Elf Aquitaine, Paris, and Willem Steenken, chairman of the executive committee of the European Association of Petroleum Geoscientists (EAPG), were delegated to set this process of reformation in motion.
EC is prepared to act as a catalyst in bringing about the change but says it has no long term role to play as an organizer or sponsor of conferences.
Bosio, who also is a member of the main SPE executive board, and Steenken will approach the SPE, whose Europec conference gets under way later this month in The Hague, the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, American Association of Petroleum Geologists, European Association of Exploration Geophysicists, and EAPG.
The aim is to combine the activities of these organizations into a European superconference that could make its first appearance in 1992 if all goes well. The date may be a little optimistic because many of the organizations have commitments well into the future.
NORTH SEA CONFERENCES
Excluded from the rationalization process will be the two big North Sea conferences, which are combined with extensive exhibits. Offshore Europe takes place in Aberdeen, and on alternate years Offshore Northern Seas is held in Stavanger.
Bosio points out that those two conferences have multidisciplinary programs. They also are tied to exhibitions and a specific North Sea market and should remain outside the scope of the superconference.
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