Sharing technical knowledge is at the heart of our evening meeting programme. Each year the Programme Committee do an outstanding job of putting together an exciting, stimulating and very relevant programme of evening meetings which reflects a broad range of technical interests. The success of these events is reflected in the continued popularity of these meetings. There are 8 of these events per year (Sept – Nov, Jan – May), held on the 4th Wednesday of the month. The format is a technical presentation followed by dinner which provides a valuable networking opportunity for attendees. This year our technical programme is kindly sponsored by Expro and Premier Oil.
The 2016 – 2017 session kicked off with Katy Heidenreich of Oil & Gas UK, describing the significant work the industry is doing through the Technology Leadership Board (TLB) to address the well cost reduction challenge. Field development has featured at several events. In November Martin O’Donnell and Matt Gibson of Premier Oil provided a fascinating insight into the ongoing development of Premier’s Catcher Field, whilst Markel Hübinette of ConocoPhillips described the changing face of asset development and management through the history of the Britannia field.
In addition to local industry experts the programme also includes SPE Distinguished Lecturers. These lecturers are recognised global experts nominated by their peers and selected by the global SPE Distinguished Lecturer Committee for quality, timeliness and relevance of presentations. Last month Steve Mackie, now with Geosim Consulting Pty Ltd., discussing the lessons learnt from occasional failures during his career in the upstream petroleum industry. This month we welcome Daniel McKinney of Sarawak Shell, who will talk about operational geochemistry.
Details of the events still to come in this session are available on our new website here. After the event the presentations are available on the knowledge section of the website – so if you miss any you can view the presentations afterwards.
The Programme Committee have already turned their attention to the 2017 – 2018 session, so if you have any suggestions for topics you would like to see covered please get in touch with Kenny McAllister, chair of our Programme Committee, programme.chair@spe-uk.org. I look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events.