Wireline Issue 25 Autumn 2013

Innovation Nation Head of BP’s North Sea operations,Trevor Garlick, will be one of the panellists at Innovation Nation, a major stakeholder debate to be held on 15 October in London. Wireline chats to Trevor ahead of the event, which will examine the importance of business innovation to the UK.

great expertise in seismic imaging, such as ocean-bottom technologies and 4D imaging, and also in technologies that allow important well intervention work to be carried out. When I consider our own Quad 204 project to redevelop the Schiehallion field, I am struck by the fact that the bulk of the £1 billion plus investment in new subsea infrastructure is being supplied from the UK, from the Aberdeen area, Fife, Yorkshire, etc. The UK is also outstanding in terms of engineering design and the knowledge it has for drilling.

Q: What role does innovation in the UK oil and gas industry play in the economy? A: Without innovation, the UK Continental Shelf would only have produced a fraction of the 40 billion barrels it has done to date and the UK would be considerably worse off. Without continued innovation, we simply will not maximise the UK’s potential returns from its offshore resources. Today,

the industry continues to drive economic growth by generating tax revenues, creating high value employment, recovering more reserves, and developing a growing export market for our expertise and technologies. Q: In what discipline is the UK a key driver of innovation?

“When I consider our own Quad 204 project to redevelop the Schiehallion field, I am struck by the fact that the bulk of the £1 billion plus investment in new subsea infrastructure is being supplied from the UK.”

Q. What has been the most important innovation over the last 20 years? A: If I was to single out one technology, which is pretty difficult, then it would have to be horizontal drilling. This has really enabled us to progress projects that would otherwise have been technically and

A: The most obvious area of leadership in the UK, at least

economically impossible to bring forward. Improved seismic imaging has also helped us understand our reservoirs better and enabled more effective targeting of our wells.

in the last decade or so, has been in the development of the subsea industry, both the hardware and the full supply chain service. In addition to the key hardware, such as umbilicals, control systems and Christmas trees, the UK has developed

BP’s Quad 204 project to re-develop the Schiehallion and Loyal fields involves a major contribution from the UK-based subsea sector

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