Agenda | All times are Malaysia Standard Time (UTC +8)

This session will engage leading executives from the region in a stimulating and forward-looking dialogue on deepwater opportunities and challenges, as well as to share knowledge and best practices with a focus on how production and operations can be sustained and improved through innovation.

Development of deepwater fields have always been pursued with favourable reservoirs due to the high cost and long development time involved. Many initiatives have been undertaken over the past few decades to standardise solutions to help improve the overall profitability of these fields by reducing overall cost and ultimately minimising the necessary interventions in the operations phase. However, these efforts have not taken away the overall impression that deepwater developments are generally expensive and can be seen as an unattractive investment if the subsurface realisations fall in the low case.

In recent years, we have seen deepwater developments buck this trend as they have managed to continuously obtain lower unit development cost values through, not only technology and innovation, but also through disciplined project management practices and more realistic subsurface predictions. This panel of distinguished speakers will aim to showcase some of the more recent projects that have shown greater cost competitiveness in light of the downturn back in 2015 and more recently during the pandemic. These projects have also been able to compete for the necessary capital in various fiscal regimes within the region as they are becoming more of an attractive investment.

This panel session aims to address how the deepwater business can respond to the challenge to halt global warming and in step with society’s progress as it works towards the Paris Agreement goal of limiting the increase in the average global temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

This imperative is being incorporated into corporate strategies as carbon neutrality goals, typically net-zero carbon by 2050. For the energy industry, the tactics considered are numerous and range from well-established practices such as utilisation of natural sinks through tree planting, driving operational excellence to eliminate flaring and abating methane intensity, shift to natural gas, through to the more challenging transition to renewable energy and alternative decarbonised fuels, to major projects involving carbon capture and storage.

How can the deepwater industry respond to this urgent challenge and develop solutions which allow them to retain economic potential? This will require a fundamental transformation of how the industry produces and utilises energy and hence, industry-wide collaboration is essential. This panel of industry experts will share their views on how co-operation can bring together the best solutions and match the development pace to align with other sectors so that global energy sources remain economical for society.