THE North-east is gearing up for one of the biggest events in its calendar as SPE Offshore Europe 2017 prepares to roll into town once more.
This biennial conference and exhibition has become established as one of the most significant oil and gas events in the world and keeps Aberdeen positioned front and centre as a global energy city.
As well as focusing on ‘embracing new realities’, the event provides a great platform for the Aberdeen city region to tell its story to a wide and diverse audience. 108 nations were represented in 2015 and this year we expect up to 50,000 visitors to pass through the doors of the AECC to meet, talk and hopefully do business with more than a thousand exhibitors.
On the topic of the venue this is, of course, the last Offshore Europe that will be held at the current site. Construction of the new £330m exhibition and conference centre just a stones-throw from Aberdeen International Airport, is moving on apace. Once complete in 2019 it will include hotels, a 12,500-capacity arena, 6,000 square metres of exhibition space, an energy centre and aims to be the most sustainable building of its type in the UK.
There are many years of life left of the operational life of the UK Continental Shelf and this has been underpinned by the progress we have seen in process efficiencies, innovation and collaboration.
The establishment of the Oil & Gas Technology Centre and the positive early progress being made towards their laudable and achievable ambition of cementing our place in the top three global energy technology locations.
Our supply chain companies continue to broaden their horizons by exploring opportunities in international markets, many of them assisted by the Chamber’s wide-ranging programme of export support. This, in turn, will contribute to the ambition of anchoring a significant energy servicing and project management hub here well into the future.
Finally, there appears to be a mood of cautious optimism backed up by our 26th Oil & Gas survey in which 42 per cent of respondents expected their business to be growing by January 2018.
Of course, despite this conditions do remain challenging. We need Government to provide the conditions to incentivise long term activity and companies to bring the necessary future investment. So, we need to strike a balance between accentuating the positive while ensuring that there is no let-up in the pace of change.
Russell Borthwick is the chief executive of Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce
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