Operational Excellence Continues to be a Key Driver in Oil and Gas Sector

Since oil prices began to fall in 2015, the oil, gas and petrochemicals sector in the Middle East has been looking for ways to increase efficiency and maximise profitability of their assets. This has led to cost cutting in some areas but we are now starting to see NOCs and IOCs adapt to the low oil price landscape. One element that has helped companies to create sustainable competitive advantage and that remains a key element of any corporate strategy today is operational excellence.

With these challenges in mind, key players are meeting in Abu Dhabi at the region’s best known operational excellence forum; OpEx MENA 2016. On the 6th and 7th December, participants will discuss best practices for creating competitive advantage and maximizing profitability of their assets. This is the fourth edition of the conference and includes presentations by leading operators SABIC, Kuwait Oil Company and Petro Rabigh as well as cutting edge consultants and service providers such as DuPont, EY, Honeywell and CISCO.

Norm Gilsdorf, President of Honeywell High Growth Regions (Russia, Middle East and Central Asia) says “OpEx is a fantastic forum for operating companies and solution providers to interact and discuss the challenges facing the industry and work collaboratively on solutions to improve the profitability of the operating companies in the region”. Mr Gilsdorf will be sharing his knowledge at the forum on how industry leaders are transforming to gain a competitive edge.

The ‘people’ element in operational excellence plays a very important role in successful implementation. Mark Eggleston, Director of Phillip Townsend Associates says, “personnel skills level improvement is important, especially in the MENA region. Simply investing in fancy hardware is not sufficient to operate at world-class standards”. Marcus Haddrell, Director of EY’s MENA People Advisory Services backs this up, “don’t forget the employee perspective. Operational effectiveness is driven out primarily through enhancing the motivation and output of people. Process and technology change can enable this”.

Harnessing new tools and technologies to drive performance of new and existing assets is also a key theme of the conference with a focus on digital transformation this year. George Khoury, Industry Director – EMEA Region for Bentley Systems, one of the sponsors of the event, foresees the main trends as follows “producers will focus on leveraging investments in sensing technologies (operational technologies) and converging these with business systems (information technologies). Another trend will be producers leveraging engineering technologies such as 3D models, photogrammetry, and laser scans to increase operational performance of existing assets and engineer improvements to new and revamped assets.” Haytham Amin, Business Development Manager - Advanced Solutions at Honeywell Process Solutions added “It’s all about Digital Transformation - by leveraging the latest technological developments such as IIoT, Big Data, Predictive Analytics, Cloud, Mobility, etc. you can uncover new opportunities in your organisation”.

OpEx MENA, the ‘must attend’ industry forum for operational excellence will take place on 6 & 7 December at the Anantara Eastern Mangroves Hotel in Abu Dhabi.

For more information about the conference, please visit www.opex.biz or contact the organiser directly at office@europetro-me.com