About

About the Summit

Our messaging is simple yet powerful. Drawing strength from our priorities (energy evolution an important one to MENA), we aim to align and tailor every event to needs and areas relevant to the region where the event is hosted—such that we are able to generate scale of focus that empower engineers, scientists, and stakeholders to act with urgency and purpose in the way of challenges and/or impediments to achieving top sustainable development priorities related to our industry.

The idea behind Gaia’s framework is to foster leadership by focusing on helping individuals in the oil and gas industry to learn how to address their sustainability performance challenges and share knowledge of their best practices in this space. This is key as companies are now prioritizing the alignment of their performance with sustainable development goals with a range of drivers from talent attraction and retention; to operational risk management; to business solutions opportunity; to providing insight to investors risking their capital, to playing a vital role in society and helping humanity evolve and take on the challenge of returning its activity inside planetary boundaries whilst providing opportunities for all humanity to thrive.

Our summit along with OSW’s initiatives can help address these complex priorities as well as create a sense of community and collective effort.

Our objective, through having this summit be part of OSW, is to aid in designing a roadmap for sustainable development in Oman, the GCC and Middle East and North Africa region by extension. This will no doubt comprise of workshops, panel discussions, forums and brainstorming sessions to define the parameters of development, funding efficiency, technological advancement as well as availability of technical and non-technical data. All of which SPE, through its HSES discipline will create by bringing sustainability experts from the region and around the world into this event.

As a parting note, both OSW and Gaia have shared commitment towards displaying sustainability leadership by innovative strategies aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Bringing stakeholders from both bodies will undeniably create maximum impact and traction for all relevant parties involved.

About Gaia

The SPE Gaia Sustainability Program was initiated by the SPE HSES discipline, one of eight technical disciplines hosted by the SPE, to enable and empower all members who wish to engage in the alignment around the future of energy with sustainable development. In Greek mythology, ‘Gaia’ is the personification of mother earth. The program was brought to life in 2019 through 8 stakeholder groups featuring 55 of some of the most influential figures within our energy industry—all gathered under one big dome in the Center for Executive Development and Educational Programs [CEDEP] in Fontainebleau, France for a 2-day summit.

It was a “proof of concept” event like no other. Eschewing lengthy reports or dull PowerPoints, participants were instead taken on a journey that fully engaged them and was geared towards brainstorming and planning future pathways with the objective to provide our industry’s individual members with the means to co-create new actions that rise to the scale of urgency of the planet’s sustainability challenges—be it through reinforcing existing efforts or by introducing new radical ideas. The idea was ‘how can we ensure that the oil and gas industry is on the right side of history?’ and through a facilitated process, the team was able to produce Pathways for action and Principles to ensure impact on our main Priorities. Since then we have launched the program worldwide and grew from a community of 55 members to now more than 1,000 inside and outside the SPE. We have some super talent to deploy and produce an amazing event that can also serve as a means to mobilize a community around safety and sustainability and supply a sustaining mechanism for the new culture and learning we would be looking to catalyze.

About SPE

Bearing in mind the strengths of SPE, embracing its momentum to distribute key knowledge, its reputation for professionals, its 124,800 members in around 134 countries, and its capability to summon skills and experience from a large range of oil and gas disciplines beyond, the HSE Technical Director and strategic characters agree the SPE is in a distinctive venue to contribute significantly in serving the industry to articulate a future road map wherein sustainable development pillars would be wholly incorporated in business decision making and in recurrently meeting in a safe as well as rebellious manner that would revolve geographically. As an individual member driven professional association. We assure partnership with associations to enhance the “operationalization” of sustainability practices measures.

Specific obligations are being placed by the, SPE 2018–2023 Strategic Plan, to industry pride and to also highlight history of accelerating engagement predominantly via its events and its working committees. Pride and Engagement are two fundamental features of the SPE Gaia Series.

SPE has had a sustainability strategy and resultant programming for its members since 2010. The Gaia series is a progression to take the obligation to be deployed in a larger scale which would be in service of its membership.