One of the biggest oil events in the global calendar opens in Stavanger on Monday, with speakers, exhibitors and delegates expected from all corners of the globe.
The last event, held in 2012, attracted nearly 60,000 visitors, 1264 companies, 34 exhibiting nations, and 109 participating nations.
This year is likely to be bigger, with an expanded exhibition area covering 23,907sq m, including OE’s stand 399 in Hall C.
Image: Visitors to ONS. Image from ONS, Kallen.
The theme of this year’s ONS is “Changes.” The only constant is change, says ONS’ organizers. This year’s conference will also make a significant milestone—it is 40 years since the first ONS in 1974, a year when the Norwegian oil industry was only just starting out.
In the intervening time, oil prices have risen and fallen. And risen again. The industry has taken technological quantum leaps ahead – and down into ultra-deep reservoirs. Major field developments have been replaced by less costly subsea solutions. New business areas and occupational tasks arise, while others have disappeared. Fewer people work offshore, and more of production is managed from onshore operations centers.
But there is still change. “We know that everything changes, so the question is what is around the next corner. Which natural resources will be most in demand? Which will we stop turning into energy? Will renewable forms of energy become commercial enough to create an explosion in innovation and business development like that in the oil and gas industry? It is the combined global technology industry that drives the world forward. The oil and gas industry is a natural component of this high-tech wheel,” says the ONS team. “Which changes will affect the industry in the years to come? And how will the industry’s innovation and technology development lead to world change? These are the issues that will be raised at ONS 2014 under the main theme Changes.”
According to Berkeley, University of California-based Dr Homa Bahrami, one of the key note speakers, businesses today must become “super-flexible.”
“The global energy industry faces metamorphic changes: geo-political, environmental, financial, technological and cultural. Business leaders have to embrace change, adapt to new realities, harness uncertainty and make their enterprises super-flexible,” Dr Bahrami says.
At ONS, the senior lecturer and faculty director at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, will give a talk called “We must work smarter – the need for cultural change.”
Martin Bachmann, a member of the Board of Executive Directors at Wintershall Holding, is also a speaker. He will address the ONS Conference in the plenary session about the future of the energy industry on Wednesday 27 August.
“As much as renewable energy plays an important role – oil and gas will also continue to form the backbone of modern economies for a long time to come. They provide the basis for a modern, competitive economy.And this will be the challenge of our industry: to make this backbone as secure, as climate-friendly and as affordable as possible. In this context innovations will play an important role in order to make better use of our reserves and produce more efficiently,” Bachmann says.
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