Fuel-time job
Shellebarger, former president of Chevron, leads host committee for 2020 World Petroleum Congress
The 2020 World Petroleum Congress is 14 months away, but don’t tell that to the Houston organizers who already have worked for years to lure and plan the massive energy conference.
Bringing the weeklong event here was a culmination of a decade’s worth of effort, one that is expected to result in more than 10,000 people from around the globe, including many of the top oil and gas companies and international energy ministers from nearly 70 countries, descending on Houston.
Leading the effort to secure the gathering as chairman of the Houston organizing committee was Jeff Shellebarger, a retired Chevron president who in recent years has also chaired the Greater Houston Partnership and helped lead the Super Bowl Host Committee.
Known as the Olympics of the energy sector, the 23rd edition of the World Petroleum Congress, which returns both to Houston and to the United States for the first time since 1987, is held every three years to discuss the future of the energy sector. Next year’s theme is “innovative energy solutions.”
The committee last week announced the 10 presenting sponsors, including Big Oil firms Chevron, Exxon Mobil and BP; Houston-based companies Halliburton, Baker Hughes and ConocoPhillips; New York’s Hess Corp.; the professional services firm Accenture; and state oil and gas companies Qatar Petroleum and Saudi Aramco.
Shellebarger sat down recently with Texas Inc. to discuss the event, scheduled for Dec. 6-10, 2020, at the George R. Brown Convention Center.
Q: So what’s the big deal about the World Petroleum Congress and its long history?
A:
Most people, unless they’ve worked overseas, probably have never experienced or don’t know what the World Petroleum Congress is. You go back to the global organization called the (London-based) World Petroleum Council. It’s membership is some 60-something countries that have oil and gas resources. The council was formed in 1933 and has a basic mission to sustainably manage each respective country’s resources. In 1933, you had Saudi Arabian oil just being discovered and you’d had some big U.S. discoveries. At that time it was more, how do we build the capability to bring these resources to market? In the last 20 years, there’s a lot about the deepwater formations, Africa becoming an energy player, South America becoming more of an energy player, and most recently it’s the U.S. shale resources. So sustainably managing the world’s resources is different for different times.
Q: What is the main theme for 2020? A: The theme of this congress is around innovation in energy.
What we’re trying to highlight is the application of new technologies in the industry — data science, artificial intelligence, the internet of things — and things like that. When you think about the world, a lot of these national oil companies and countries know what these technologies are, but they may not have much experience with them. So we can showcase best practices and the current state of those technologies.
Q: What else will be covered?
A: The second part of innovation is people development and training. The third part is topical areas: What is the future of the industry? There’s a whole series of conversations around that. What makes this different is those conversations today usually are U.S.-centric or Western Europe-centric. They’re very politicized. This is an opportunity to hear it from all different perspectives, including the small countries and companies producing oil and gas — or the very developed countries like China that aren’t producing much oil and gas.
Q:What about more locally?
A: Houston is the global center of oil and gas. I think it’s the perfect place to have a conversation like this, it’s a perfect time to have that conversation. Most of these players have offices in Houston or they’ve been to Houston. They like the diversity here and they feel welcomed here.
Q: Will the focus be exclusively on energy?
A: We want to highlight the medical sector, the transportation sector, NASA and the space sector. They’re all kind of interrelated with some of the technologies we use in the oil and gas business. We can bring these global delegations into Houston, showcase them and create those engagements. That’s going to help Houston better understand that role and its opportunities. And the other countries will see other opportunities in Houston.
So that economic development angle is important. Houston’s reputation around the world continues to grow. We have a better image externally than we do sometimes of ourselves. We learned that with the Super Bowl. People really see Houston as a global city. Having a chance to showcase that is a big opportunity.
Q: How does the World Petroleum Congress differentiate itself from other major Houston energy events?
A: It’s not an OTC. It’s not CERAWeek. It has many more dimensions than that. There’s a higher level of objective we’re trying to achieve here. What’s common across them is sharing technology and business. What’s different is you get so many of the CEOs and energy ministers, the international energy companies and all the local and independent companies. It’s just a different audience you’d get from any one of those other things. When you have the congress in Johannesburg or Madrid or Istanbul, these become almost Olympic-like events because the whole country gets involved. Now we have way too big a country here to boil down to one conference, but it’ll be a big deal with respect to the calendar of the oil and gas industry globally.
Q: What else will be highlighted about Texas?
A: We also plan to showcase the whole Permian Basin story. This also gets to why Houston was awarded. The Permian story is of high interest to the rest of the world. How did you unlock the shale in the U.S.? It’s a story of the innovation and how we had the basic infrastructure to produce into. It’s a story of risk capital availability. It’s a story of small companies doing that initial de-risking and then the larger companies now turning it into a factory type of approach. Those resources exist in other parts around the world. How you put all those elements together is really a critical part of making it work economically for any other country. One of the greatest stories when we look back in 10 years will be the unlocking of the shale plays in the U.S.
Q: What do you think is the key to that story?
A: The cool thing is that the resource has been known about for 30-plus years, but almost no one would have ever imagined it would be an economically attractive source. The smaller companies with capital available to them were able to try new things and essentially de-risk technology and the type of reservoirs we’re dealing with. That’s a pretty phenomenal story. Once that ball started rolling, then you had the independents and majors start to step in and learn how they could do this and drive efficiency. That’s where we are today.
Q: How will you showcase that?
A: We don’t have all the details worked out, but we have companies that are interested in taking trips out to the Permian while they’re here. There’s an objective of a conference like this is to accelerate that transfer of knowledge. There’s a pretty good pipeline today for that transfer to Argentina. South America and Canada probably have the most interest right now.
Q: How will climate change concerns, greenhouse gas emissions and the rise of renewable energy all factor in?
A: Oil and gas production is going to be a significant source of energy for the foreseeable future. You simply have to look objectively at the demand curve for energy. You’ll need all forms of energy. Oil and gas is going to be a big part of that for some time. With technology and innovation, it gets cleaner and with smaller carbon footprints. We want every country around the world to be more efficient. But if you arbitrarily just say oil and gas has to be off the table in 10 years, then there’s no substitute you can replace it with. So you work on efficiency and substitution where it makes sense and continue to move along this progressive path.
Q: How do geopolitical tensions factor in, especially with the recent missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil supplies?
A: I’m not going to go into all of that. What I’ll say is it just underscores the geopolitical nature of the industry. You have to work through the things that are causing the geopolitical friction. It’s all extremely interconnected. What was interesting is that this last one wasn’t more significant. It kind of speaks to how we have an interconnected supply chain, and we’re able to move around the supplies to fill the demand when one piece of the supply goes down. The numbers say we’re reasonably well supplied. That balance is a lot narrower today though than it was a couple of years ago. Robust supply and demand keeps energy affordable and really helps the countries that need the energy.
Q: So what’s next with the planning?
A: For two years, we’ve been working behind the scenes laying the foundation to put this together. Because we don’t do this all the time, it’s kind of starting from scratch. So far it’s gone really well. We have the foundation in place and some pretty significant interest. With the sponsorship announcement, we’re kind of opening the door. Then it’s finalizing the details of the program, who the speakers are going to be and the details. A fair amount of the work is just beating the bushes and the marketing and making sure we have fairly robust participation.