About this Workshop

Abstract

The ever expanding global population and economic development is progressively increasing the energy requirements worldwide. Despite active research and development into alternate energy sources, fossil fuels currently continue to be the mainstay energy source for the global economy.

This trend directly challenges the oil and gas industry to focus on increasing production as production plateau or declines in mature fields. There is a clear focus by operating companies to extend the economic producing life of such fields using cost effective solution, this often involves retrofitting or extension of initial operating design limits thus introducing specific quality, health, safety and environment (QHSE) related risks. More than ever before, compliance and performance through risk management is vital to the success of these projects.

These potential risks and challenges are often evolving in nature and may be implicit or explicit requiring specific techniques and focus to be effectively managed. Overlooking the QHSE risk during the project life cycle could lead to severe or catastrophic consequences on attaining the stated project objectives. Oil and gas operating companies tend to take varied approaches or techniques to manage these risks associated with brownfield projects and operations. Moreover, in this era of the world being a “global village”, the failures of one operator may have repercussions to beyond that organisation. As a result, this will envisage the management best practices for brownfield operations to often revolve around these subject areas:

• Defining QHSE performance objectives and sustaining compliance
• Ensuring operational and asset integrity through the project life cycle
• Deployment of new technology and processes to better manage brownfield related risk
• Robust emergency risk management
• Management of SIMOPS
• Environmental liability assessment of brownfield operations

Risk management is a two faced coin requiring risk identification and assessment on one hand and compliance to standards of performance, processes and codes of practice designed to mitigate these risks on the other hand. In the era of “organisational excellence”, organisations that enhance their QHSE culture in a systematic manner via establishment of leading indicators and robust mitigation planning are bound to excel and ensure long term objectives are met.

Early identification of risks and advance allocation of sufficient resources to manage and control these challenges is the foundation to successful brownfield projects and operations. This applied technology workshop creates the forum for effective collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Visa Information

SPE Middle East, North Africa, and India will assist in providing a visa invitation letter, upon request in writing, to confirmed registrants after receiving full payment of registration fees. Visa invitation letters take five days to issue from the date of request and it is the delegate's responsibility to obtain their own visa. SPE cannot issue the visa nor can we guarantee it will be obtained.

 

Workshop Guidelines

Format

Two (2) days of informal discussions prompted by selected keynote presentations and discussions. Workshops maximise the exchange of ideas among attendees and presenters through brief technical presentations followed by extended breakout sessions and Q&A periods. The majority of the presentations are in the form of case studies, highlighting engineering achievements and lessons learnt.

Documentation

• Proceedings will not be published; therefore, formal papers, and handouts are not expected from speakers.
• Work in progress, new ideas and interesting projects are sought.
• Professionally prepared visual aids are not required; handwritten view graphs are entirely acceptable.
• Note-taking by participants is encouraged.

Poster Session

The Steering Committee encourages registrations from professionals who are able to prepare and present a poster on a relevant project. For further details, kindly contact Saba Faghihi, event specialist at sfaghihi@spe.org.

Attendance

Registrations will be accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis. The Steering Committee encourages attendance from those who can contribute to the workshop most effectively either in discussions or with posters. A mix of attendees in terms of geographic origin, companies and disciplines will be encouraged.

Workshop Deliverables

• The Steering Committee will appoint a “scribe” to record the discussions and to produce the full workshop report for SPE.
• This report will be circulated to all attendees as the workshop deliverable within 4–6 weeks following the workshop. The copyright of the report is with SPE.
• PowerPoint presentation materials will be posted on a specific SPE URL address after the workshop. Provision of the materials by the speakers will signify their permission for SPE to do so.

Commercialism

In keeping with ATW objectives and the SPE mission, commercialism in posters or presentations will not be permitted. Company logos must be limited to the title slide and used only to indicate the affiliation of the presenter and others involved in the work.

Attendance Certificate

All attendees will receive an attendance certificate attesting to their participation in the workshop. This certificate will be provided in exchange for a completed Workshop Questionnaire.

Continuing Education Units

Attendees at this workshop qualify for SPE Continuing Education Units (CEU) at the rate of 0.1 CEU per hour of the workshop.