Leading industry players support opening conference of 2009 GVF Oil and Gas Communications series

Lead conference series sponsor Schlumberger have been joined in their support by Arqiva, IPX International, Hermes Datacomms, and CapRock Communications. Other sponsoring organisations will shortly be joining this already prestigious line-up.

The Aberdeen (12th & 13th May) and Abu Dhabi (9th & 10th June) events, together with a third conference in 2009, in Kuala Lumpur in November, together comprise the fourth consecutive year of the successful Oil & Gas Communications conference series.

Whilst current global economic conditions are creating pressures that continue to intensify energy sector demand for broadband communications-driven operational efficiencies, and as downward pressures are exerted on the price of hydrocarbons, the oil & gas industry is striving to optimise its investments in various broadband communications platforms to increase efficiencies in exploration, drilling and production.

Therefore, in continuing the objectives set-out in previous years of the conference series, the primary focus of the Aberdeen, Abu Dhabi and Kuala Lumpur events will be even more closely focused on examining precisely how energy sector executives are now applying state-of-the-art broadband solutions to increase the profitability of, and to add value to, their businesses.

To help achieve this the conferences will deliver extended networking opportunities between demand (end-user) and supply (vendor) expert practitioners, and promote dialogue to detail the applications and communications imperatives of the energy market vertical.

As the Aberdeen conference programme will be the first to illustrate, whilst it is true of these imperatives that, in relative terms, communications solutions represent a small fraction of energy companies' total CAPEX and OPEX, well-managed ICT networks can play a disproportionately great role in reducing expenditures in drilling, production, exploration, and in every other area of operations.

Commented Martin Jarrold, GVF Chief of International Programme Development and Conference Series Chairman, "Increasingly, upstream, and downstream, company operations across the various industry segments of the Oil & Gas industry are dependent upon both fixed and mobile broadband links, services, technology solutions and the manifold complex applications they are used to support. oil & gas E&P has become increasingly dependent on the creation of an information and communications environment that comprises stand-alone satellite-based solutions, satellite-terrestrial hybrid solutions, and some stand-alone terrestrial technologies, including fibre."

Mr. Jarrold continued, "In the oil & gas upstream environment, in particular, mission critical operational success is totally dependent on access to the most efficient information and communications technologies (ICTs) and to a vast array of sophisticated applications used by teams of key E&P professionals."

Production data management, remote surveillance, modelling solutions, etc., all are increasingly integrated into an inclusive web-based visualisation framework, with these various constituent elements of the digital oilfield (and gas field) dependent on the satellite, satellite-hybrid, and terrestrial wireless communications environment to provide the necessary connectivity, the required bandwidth, the imperative reliability, and essential cost-effectiveness.

Similarly, wireless broadband services for offshore and remote oil & gas drilling rigs and production platforms that permit offshore workers to communicate with their homes and friends more easily using wireless enabled laptop computers and PDAs for e-mail, instant messaging and video/webcam, uses the very same type of satellite-based links which comprise the backbone of the digital communications infrastructure of oil & gas rigs everywhere, but which is dedicated both to the welfare of production crews in harsh, extreme and remote locations, particularly offshore, and to company interest in maintaining high levels of retention of skilled crews.

Offshore E&P in the North Sea continues to mature as the region's reserves of oil & gas begin to realise reducing yields, but the offshore E&P environment in other, emerging, hydrocarbon bearing parts of the world are able to leverage many of the lessons learned from, and communications solutions developed during, the evolution of North Sea offshore E&P.

Such lessons will now become more widely applicable, albeit using more modern and sophisticated technology platforms, and within the context of even more geographically challenging physical environments

Whilst North Sea reserves continue to mature, they are not yet exhausted, and growth in the long-term global thirst for supplies of hydrocarbon-based energy - despite price fluctuations engendered by a decline in demand due to short-term economic contraction - means that the depleting reserves of the North Sea are still of economic interest, and using the very latest extraction technologies are still a financially viable and attractive resource.

"In this context the 2nd Annual Oil & Gas Communications Europe Conference in Aberdeen conference will be asking the following questions", added Martin Jarrold.

"How will the cutting-edge communications solutions and digital applications being developed for, and being deployed in, other offshore E&P environments around the world, be applied to the North Sea to effect the exploitation of the very last barrel of oil and very last cubic metre of gas? Will the 21st Century Digital Oilfield and Digital Gas Field that is evolving in, say, the Gulf of Mexico, or South East Asia, or West Africa, or the Caspian Basin, impact as an extended lifespan for the reserves of the North Sea," Jarrold said.

What is certain is that more than ever, the wealth of sophisticated applications that communications technologies bring to the disposal of geologists, geophysicists, drilling engineers, seismic data analysts, etc. - experts who not only locate new oil & gas reserves but assist in developing more effective and efficient techniques for yielding them from underground or beneath the ocean floor - have an increasingly central role.

Companies confirmed to speak at the Aberdeen conference at the time of this release include (in alphabetical order): Arqiva, Baker Hughes Inc, CapRock Communications, Eutelsat, Fugro Chance, Gulf Of Mexico Broadband Special Interest Group, Hermes Datacomms, Intelsat, IPX International, NERA Telecommunications, Parallel, Remote Data Services, Schlumberger, Talisman, Weatherford, YR20. Confirmed additions to this line-up are being received on a daily basis.

The second conference in the 2009 Oil & Gas Communications series, in Abu Dhabi, will continue these broad themes but within a quite different context of the United Arab Emirates' vast recoverable hydrocarbon resources - proven crude oil reserves of 97.8 billion barrels and currently estimated natural gas reserves of 6.07 trillion cubic metres.

In Abu Dhabi specifically, with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) supervising energy policy under the guidance of the Supreme Petroleum Council, crude oil production amounts to approximately 2.7 million barrels per day and natural gas production to 48.8 billion cubic metres per day, placing ADNOC in the top 10 of the world's energy producing companies.

Abu Dhabi is by far the biggest oil producer in the UAE and the extensive diversification of ADNOC is fully reflective of both the scale of Abu Dhabi's hydrocarbon assets, and of the policy of gaining maximum leverage from all the various upstream and downstream industry segments, and closely-related industrial sectors, such as: Oil & Gas Exploration & Production, Oil & Gas Exploration & Production Services, Oil & Gas Processing, Petrochemicals, Maritime Transportation, and Refined Products & Distribution.

Commented Paul Stahl, Managing Partner of UK-EMP, "Against this sweeping backdrop, the 4th Annual Oil & Gas Communications MENA Conference will bring a key focus to those areas of upstream Oil & Gas activity in Abu Dhabi that are covered by not only the industrial operations of such ADNOC subsidiary companies as: the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations (ADCO), the Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company (ADMA-OPCO), and Zakum Development Company (ZADCO), but also by the operations of companies from the E&P services arena such as: the National Drilling Company (NDC), and the Abu Dhabi Petroleum Ports Operating Company (IRSHAD), amongst others."

To this end the conference will bring together key leaders and experts from the oil & gas sector as well as the communications and commercial applications sectors into one high-level forum.

As in earlier conferences, the Abu Dhabi event will, therefore, create opportunities for companies in the oil & gas vertical to call upon all ICT solutions providers - Terrestrial Wireline, Wirelesss, and Satellite in the communications field, together with developers/vendors in the digital applications field - to match their offerings more closely to the specific demands and requirements of the 'Oil & Gas patch'.

Despite this highly-targeted focus, the Abu Dhabi conference will also adopt a broader view, asking how energy sector executives can maximise their overall leverage of broadband communications, applying state-of-the-art ICT to run their networks to optimum effect, to include such elements as localisation of operations, training and retention of personnel, automation, remote monitoring of mission-critical systems, emergency preparedness, social responsibility, and much more, revealing cost-saving techniques and applications, the latest technologies, new network architectures, commercial trends, and critical regulatory and spectrum-management considerations.