10
Apr
2018
Key Events Set the Flight Path for Bridgehead Cluster Ventures
The MENA region never ceases to push out major news which impacts on the international energy matrix and recent weeks have been no exception.
The double headed news that ENI of Italy was paying US$875 million to participate in the offshore Umm Shaif and Nasr offshore field developments in Abu Dhabi and, in reverse polarity, MASDAR of Abu Dhabi was paying US$934 million for a 10% stake in ENI’s massive Zohr field in offshore Egypt was closely followed by the announcement that Bahrain had discovered 80 billion barrels of shale oil and 10-20 million cubic feet of tight gas off its west coast.
Against this backcloth, April will be another busy month in the Middle East energy calendar with the EIC Connect – Oil, Gas and Beyond at Dusit Thani in Abu Dhabi just around the corner on April 17.
HFI Consulting International will be joining senior figures from the UAE Ministry of Energy, ADNOC, major contractors and delegates from the supply chain to discuss the region’s growing opportunities for businesses that are able to add value to the mix. We’ll look at the challenges, and the optimum business models and strategies which should be deployed in a new era dominated by resource maximisation and in-country value policy objectives.
The message is increasingly clear that the region is looking for more innovation, more technology, more investment and more skills and training and EIC Connect Oil & Gas and Beyond is another chance for UK companies to showcase their offerings.
Overlapping the event will be the Mediterranean Offshore Conference (MOC) 2018 in Alexandria on 17-19 April which leads on from the Egypt Petroleum Show (EGYPS) in Cairo in February. The latter was well attended by companies from Scotland, the rest of the UK, Norway and the Netherlands.
HFI views the Mediterranean and Red Sea as providing major new deepwater/offshore opportunities for North Sea-origin businesses and we will be closely examining the next steps in our Med and Red campaign on the back of our findings at EGYPS and MOC 2018.
Following the EIC event, we will be attending the SPE-KSA Annual Technical Symposium and Exhibition (ATS&E) held at Dharan Expo from April 23-26, which is now emerging as the go-to annual event in Saudi Arabia for advanced technology and market updates.
This event will be a platform for us to move onto the pathfinder stage of our bridgehead cluster ventures (BCV) for advanced drilling and well management services and subsea technology services clusters for Saudi Arabia. The pathfinder programme will involve potential cluster participants entering a pre-launch series of checks on key commercial and legal issues ahead of the planned launches in Q3.
If you’re attending EIC Connect, MOC or the ATSE and would like to find out more about the opportunities presented by our new BCV initiative, please do get in touch by email.