Offshore staff
ABUJA, Nigeria -- For 11 years, PennWell's Offshore West Africa (OWA) Conference & Exhibition has been the leading source of information on new technology and operating expertise for this region.
The 2007 conference was no exception. This year's OWA, "Venturing into New Depths," was held in Abuja, Nigeria, March 20-22. More than 1,000 attendees and nearly 100 exhibitors from around the world gathered in Abuja to assess the current state of the industry in West Africa and to lay plans for future projects.
The technical focus areas for this year's technical sessions covered subjects as wide ranging as field architecture and economics, project financing, deepwater operations case studies and lessons learned, subsea technology, riser technology, marginal field development, floating facilities, and well construction.
A separate focus, and one that was of significant interest to attendees, was local content. Nigeria, which now requires 40% local content, has a goal of increasing that obligation to 70% by 2010.
A special event at this year's show was aroundtable discussion following lunch on the second day of the conference at which local industry leaders from Nigeria's state-owned NNPC, Shell, Total, and Addax Petroleum voiced their views on trends in the region.
"The presentations at this year's conference were top notch across the board," said Eldon Ball, editor-in-chief ofOffshore magazine and conference director for OWA. "The quality of the content and the presenters at this year's event were the best I've seen to date."
PennWell is laying plans for next year's OWA conference, which will take place in January 29-31, 2008. Exhibitors in this year's show have already shown their support for OWA 2008, with over half booking space for next year.
3/27/2007
