The roundtable panel was attended by esteemed speakers from the country’s oil and gas industry, including National Commission of Hydrocarbons president Juan Carlos Zepeda, deputy secretary of energy for hydrocarbons Lourdes Melgar, director general of Pemex E&P Gustavo Hernández, Schlumberger president for Mexico and Central America Arindam Bhattacharya, PwC Strategy& vice president Juan Trebino, CBM Exploration and Production Engineering CEO Luis Vielma, BG Group director of public and corporate affairs Adrian Rodriguez-Montfort, and executive director of GE Oil & Gas Mexico Gabriel Cerdio.

The discussion was titled “Mexico’s Oil and Gas Development Prospects,” and analysed a range of topics with respect to Pemex’s evolving status from a monopoly to a competitive entity, the impact of falling oil prices on Mexico’s historic oil bidding round, current state of Mexico’s hydrocarbons infrastructure and its energy strategy through 2025, increased collaboration between IOCs and regulatory bodies and the implementation of new technologies and best practices in action. The Oil & Gas Year’s regional director for Americas, Peter Szabadi, and country director for Mexico moderated the event.

The roundtable session will be featured in The Oil & Gas Year’s fourth energy report on the country, The Oil & Gas Year, Mexico 2015. The book will highlight Mexico’s most important and influential companies, projects, individuals and policies throughout the energy chain.

For news and features from Mexico, click here.

The roundtable gathered the leaders from the industry’s top oil and gas companies and government agencies, including NCDMB executive secretary Ernest Nwapa, Amni International chairman Chief Tunde Afolabi, Energia managing director Felix Amieyeafori, Schlumberger group managing director West Africa Eke U. Eke, Weatherford International managing director Femi D. Thomas, and Saipem managing director Giuseppe Surace, Tenoil CEO Tony Chukwueke and Makon Group CEO Oluseyi Abiodun Makinde. The Oil & Gas Year’s country director for Nigeria chaired the event.

The panelists discussed the challenges, opportunities and solutions related to attracting investment into the country’s oil and gas industry, with a number of key findings and topics emerging throughout the discussion. While challenges including falling global oil prices, rising costs of doing business in Nigeria, and the continued uncertainty surrounding the passage of the country’s Petroleum Industry Bill were brought to the fore, the consensus surrounding the industry’s growth remained optimistic, most notably through a focus on the gains in local content capacity development and the presence of strong investment fundamentals in the market. The international oilfield services companies, represented by Femi Thomas of Weatherford and Eke U. Eke of Schlumberger, brought up concerns related to excessive permit requirements and impractical laws related to the re-export of equipment to neighbouring markets. On the operators’ side, Tony Chukwueke of Tenoil stressed the opportunity for indigenous companies to weather oil price shocks by adopting an integrated approach to the value chain, while his counterpart from Amni International, Chief Tunde Afolabi, countered with a strategy of focusing on core business and creating appropriate partnerships.

Ernest Nwapa, Executive Secretary of NCDMB, spoke to the media after the event. “The Oil & Gas Year’s Strategic Roundtable has once again served as a key catalyst for continued local content development, with this year’s edition serving as a vehicle through which capacity development initiatives and success stories can be showcased to the international investment community. While global market forces including the oil price are affecting everyone, Nigeria is becoming a more attractive destination for investment as it builds a stronger foundation and more fertile investment climate through the development of local capacity within the oil and gas sector and its supporting industries.”

The roundtable will be printed in The Oil & Gas Year Nigeria 2015 and will feature the comments and views shared by the participants throughout the event.

Click here for more Nigeria news and features 

Peruvian charity Asociacion Proyecto Peruanos handled the donation and The Oil & Gas Year Peru 2013’s country director went to Peru so that she could meet the family and help with building work.

Participating were Perupetro president Luis Ortigas, Hydrocarbons director Juan Ortíz from the Ministry of Energy & Mines, Odebrecht Latinvest head Jorge Barata, CEO Barbara Bruce of Hunt Oil, Former Prime Minister Beatriz Merino for the Peruvian Hydrocarbons Society, Andre Velarde Chainskaia of Schlumberger, general manager Luis Alfonso Carrera of Credicorp, and senior regional specialist Enrique Rodrigues Flores of IADB’s energy division.

The event tackled a range of issues including foreign investment in Peru’s hydrocarbons sector, the new national energy plan for 2014-2025, the effects of falling oil prices on the sector; relations between operators, government and local communities; and the implementation of new technologies and best practices in action. The event was moderated by Beatriz de la Vega, oil and gas leader at EY Peru.

A full report on the roundtable will be printed in the The Oil & Gas Year’s third edition on the country, The Oil & Gas Year Peru 2015. The book will highlight Peru’s most important and influential companies, projects, individuals and policies throughout the energy chain.

Click here for interviews and news about Peru’s oil industry

The event will be held at the Kuwait International Fairground, starting with the opening ceremony at 9am on March 3, 2015. The exhibition runs for three days until March 5. The conference will be held on on March 4 and 5.

GOGCE serves as an excellent opportunity for KOC to exchange information with the community at large and provide them with details pertaining to the company’s activities and operations.

By raising awareness and strengthening the partnership between KOC and its contractors and suppliers, GOGCE plays an important role for KOC in its drive for broader business relationships and knowledge-based expansion. The conference also creates value for all participants by providing KOC staff and others with information related to the latest techniques, material, equipment and services on offer in the oil industry.

The event itself showcases KOC’s main groups, KOC’s contractors and suppliers and a number of local universities and private institutes. GOGCE’s activities are distributed over a three-day period in March, with many speeches and activities being held over the course of the event.

Elshad Nasirov, SOCAR’s vice president for investments and marketing delivered the keynote address at the launch event, which was followed by the year’s awards ceremony. Commenting on the progress made in Azerbaijan’s energy industry over the past year, he addressed the major projects further connecting Azerbaijan to the global energy community. Expressing his support for The Oil & Gas Year Azerbaijan 2015, he added, “The Oil & Gas Year team have acted with the highest standards and produced the best resource for our oil and gas industry…this book is not for [those in attendance] but for the international community to be aware of what we are trying to achieve.”

At the ceremony, Ikhtiyar Akhundov, general director of BOS Shelf was honoured with the Man of the Year. Leading the largest fabrication yard in Azerbaijan, general manager of the BOS Shelf Yard – formerly the Baku Deep Water Jacket Factory – Ikhtiyar Akhundov has effectively managed to keep the yard involved in all the major projects in Azerbaijan, such as the Chirag Oil Project and Shah Deniz Phase One.

In order to fulfil its responsibilities for the Shah Deniz Phase Two project – where BOS Shelf has the responsibility of all the fabrication of offshore structures and marine support base services – and future offshore subsea developments, BOS Shelf will undergo a major strategic upgrade that will make the yard one of the most developed in the Caspian region. A training facility will be developed for the training of welders, fitters and riggers, developing 250 new welding procedures for the first time in Azerbaijan.

Furthermore, in order to cater for Shah Deniz and future subsea projects, BOS Shelf will build a special subsea facility, coating facility, new warehouse and new quays. Perhaps the most exciting visionary project of the yard is its push for becoming a logistic centre for servicing offshore projects, through the development of a $300 million-400 million, 1.7-kilometre quay with the necessary facilities for servicing vessels including those for bunkering, fuelling, water storage and mud storage.

Saipem-BOS Shelf-Star Gulf consortium was presented with the Contract of the Year award. In April 2014, the Saipem-BOS Shelf-Star Gulf signed a master agreement with BP for the fabrication, transportation and installation of the offshore facilities for the Shah Deniz phase two gas development project. Inside this master agreement, the consortium also signed two call-off agreements, a $750 million-contract for the construction of more than 45,000 tonnes of jackets, piles and subsea structures and a $1.8-billion contract for offshore transportation and installation of the jackets, piles, topsides and subsea infrastructure, laying export and in-field pipelines and diving services.

BP was presented with the Upstream Project of the Year award for the Shah Deniz Phase Two Development. On December 17, 2013 the Shah Deniz Consortium led by BP announced the final investment decision for the stage two development of the Shah Deniz gas-condensate field. Shah Deniz will be the first fully subsea development in the Caspian Sea, demanding the drilling and completion of 26 subsea wells and the construction of two bridge-linked platforms. The upstream development together with the expansion of the South Caucasus Pipeline to transport the 16 bcm (565 bcf) per year of gas from phase two will cost around $28 billion and create 15,000 jobs in Azerbaijan.

The launch and awards ceremony was sponsored by SOCAR-AQS and Fairmont Hotel Baku.

The Oil & Gas Year Azerbaijan 2015 is available here.