At the Nor-Shipping Conference 2011, which included a half-day Offshore session, both industry heavyweights and rising stars shared their insights and visions with standing-room only audiences.
At the Nor-Shipping Conference 2011, which included a half-day Offshore session, both industry heavyweights and rising stars shared their insights and visions with standing-room only audiences.
The theme of Nor-Shipping 2011 was “What’s Next?” and award-winning journalist and CNN analyst Todd Benjamin led lively roundtable discussions on Next-Generation Business and Next-Generation Leaders on the first day and The Future After Deepwater Horizon and Next-Generation Technology on the second day.
Maritime minds + Nor-Shipping = insight
The Opening Conference attracted an audience of 675 and featured heavyweights such as Tor Olav Trøim of Frontline, Peter Evensen of Teekay Corporation and Peter M. Anker of RS Platou as well as new generation leaders, including Thomas Wilhelmsen of the Wilhelmsen Group and Cecilie Fredriksen, daughter of Norway-born shipping tycoon John Fredriksen.
Highlights from the conference included Trond Giske, Norway’s minister of trade and industry, suggesting that industry frontrunners going ahead of “slow politicians” with environmental solutions will be the winners. Teekay CEO Peter Evensen responded by emphasizing how voyage costs now steal 75% of revenues and suggested delegates must look to US aviation where fuel-efficient planes are replacing 737s and 747s.
Evensen was also spurred by IMO secretary-general Efthimious Mitropoulos – who said predicting the future is “like peering through frosted glass” and asked delegates how strong the industry’s appetite for new regulation is – to urge shipping to be its own best advocate in the regulation debate, warning that the alternative would be “higher costs and a patchwork of mismatched rules.”
Looking ahead, Siva Shipping COO Saravana Sivasankaran predicted Africa would become the ‘BRIC of the next decade’, while Frontline CEO Tor Olav Trøim said LNG “… might be the best business opportunity Norway has had since it discovered oil” and that it might save the industry from “the worst shipping market since the black death.”
José Sergio Gabrielli, CEO of Brazilian oil giant Petrobras, stole the show at the Agenda Offshore conference, which drew an audience of 725. Nor-Shipping’s first-ever offshore conference signifies the increasing importance of the offshore oil and gas industry to shipping and Norway’s focus on Brazil as a new territory for its expertise in deepwater, harsh environment oil drilling.
Highlights from the conference included National Oilwell Varco CEO Pete Miller citing Norway as “the poster child” for how Brazil will develop its offshore oil and gas, and José Sergio Gabrielli confirming that Petrobras will need 53 rigs and 568 vessels by 2020 and underlining that the Brazilian oil boom will involve large domestic content. Gabrielli also underlined that the key lesson from Deepwater Horizon is that “the industry has to follow procedures rather than playing the risks.”
What's next on Youtube
If you were inspired by our speakers, or missed the conference, you can find Youtube friendly clips of conference sessions and speaker’s notes here:
http://youtube.nextgenerationshipping.com/
Conference papers
Some of the presentations from the Nor-Shipping Conferences are available for download >>