Oil & Gas Vision towards Future Talent – By Chief Executive Deirdre Michie 

Oil & Gas UK’s ambitions and priorities for this year are clear: we are focused on championing Vision 2035, highlighting the industry’s contribution to a lower carbon economy, and ensuring the sector is a safe and inclusive place to work today and for many years to come.

OGUK is proud to support Vision 2035 – industry’s shared ambition to add a generation of productive life to the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS), whilst growing supply chain opportunities at home, internationally and into other sectors.
 
In support of this, we know that a continued focus on project efficiency will help unlock the next generation of North Sea development. This in turn will provide much needed activity for the supply chain and continue to position this industry as an attractive one in which to do business, and a competitive one that is attracting much needed investment.
 
Indeed, a great example of such efficiency is the subsea standardisation guidelines, which were the result of the constructive efforts of over 70 people from more than 30 companies and were published by the Efficiency Task Force (ETF) two years ago.  
 
While subsea engineering has of course helped to maximise the life of existing production infrastructure, producing more oil and gas at a lower cost – over longer distances and in deeper waters – this ETF project addressed the industry’s tendency to “gold-plate” projects and push up costs.

Since then there have been almost 300 downloads of the guidelines and, in applying them, a number of key projects have improved their economics and been sanctioned for development as a result.
 
Also supporting our ambition to achieve Vision 2035 will be an increased focus on diversity and inclusion to ensure we continue to retain and attract skilled people to the sector.
 
With a diverse workforce comes a wide spectrum of thoughts and ideas; critical to the problem-solving nature of our pioneering industry, and also to its sustainability and longevity as we compete today and build for the future.
 
As we do this, we must remind ourselves that our future success is inextricably linked to the economic wellbeing of the UK: remaining key to the security of energy supply, supporting hundreds of thousands of highly skilled jobs, and contributing billions of pounds to the UK economy – and that it will continue to do so for decades to come.