For the first time in 13 years, the organising committee decided to make DEVEX 2016 free to attend for the first 350 delegates in response to the economic environment.

The strong technical program attracted interest and support from Operators, Service Companies, Academia and the Regulator and running free of charge also allowed those recently made redundant the opportunity to stay connected.

Making the first 350 places free to attend wouldn’t have been possible without the support of industry partners, BP, Centrica, ConocoPhillips, Maersk Oil, Nexen, OGA, Premier Oil and TAQA.

This year’s DEVEX Conference which took place on 18^th and 19^th May has been about collaboration in action – Operators sharing both successes and lessons learned in a way to allow our teams to collaborate and add value to everyone’s workflows.

Collaboration, reducing risk, costs and improving production and operational efficiency were all common themes at DEVEX 2016.  Delegates were urged to remain positive because despite the current economic climate, there continues to be a great deal of good and interesting activity planned.

The Conference attracted nearly 400 delegates on each day who saw over 43 presentations including Premier Oil and the Catcher Development; Statoil and Mariner; ConocoPhillips UK decommissioning and Penguins re-development project, Shell.

Gunther Newcombe from OGA, Huseyn Gasimov from Nobel Upstream and David Boyle from ConocoPhillips gave the opening address on the future of the UKCS.

Centrica Ensign Core was a highlight this year.  Alongside the main technical programme, we ran a series of Masterclasses for enhanced learning.

On Day 2, 15 busy poster sessions took place.  A new edition to DEVEX was the North Sea Equity Showcase, hosted by license operators and oil companies operating in the UKCS.  The presentations included varied investment opportunities across exploration, appraisal and development.

The popular Young Professionals event – Making the World Your Oyster was chaired by Nigel Bradburn of the Energy Institute and featured a panel of esteemed professionals including Willie Reid, Strathclyde Oil and Gas Institute; Jackie Mann, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Proserv; Dan Purkis, Technology Director and Co-Founder, Well-SENSE and Mark Lappin, Director of UK/Netherlands Exploration & Subsurface, Centrica.

Following the Conference, Dr Doug Boyd lead the field trip for an evening visit to the sand dunes and tidal mudflats of the Ythan Estuary.

2016 has been a tough year but we hope that DEVEX provided a valuable, cost effective training and learning experience for you and your staff.  I am delighted at the buzz that the Conference created and we will build on that for future years.

Watch this space for DEVEX 2017!