From the President - February 2008
These are turbulent times in the world economy. Stock markets are tumbling, the housing market has hit the wall and there are more and more newspaper articles questioning whether we are at the beginning of a global recession.
No one really knows whether this is the case or not, but from the marine construction view this is not the picture we see. Our assets are achieving high utilisation, everyone seems to be busy and new people and new assets are continuously entering our business. Apart from the question of a potential over-supply of vessels in a few years, there appear to be few clouds on the horizon with regard to the market and available work.
In addition to the volume of growth, we are seeing a shift in the industry which is becoming more prevalent - the importance of national oil companies (NOCs) as clients.
IMCA is well recognised by all the major oil companies and a number of the NOCs, but we see that more and more NOCs are becoming field operators or partners with more active participation. This leaves IMCA with the task of ensuring the role and contribution of the association are well understood by these new operators. Hence, IMCA is reinforcing its dialogue with the NOCs.
One of IMCA’s objectives is to ease the free movement of personnel world-wide. Some challenges which are not new to our industry, but are unfortunately growing in importance, are 'geopolitical barriers' - or, in other words, national restrictions on the free movement of people and equipment around the oil industry. Examples include requirements to use only national crews in certain waters and a number of other constraints imposed on the industry.
IMCA has launched a study to better map out these problems on a global basis in order to identify areas where we can try to improve the situation. We accept that this may not deliver quick fixes, but it is still something we believe will be important to our members.
Safety excellence in a global environment was the title of the latest IMCA safety seminar. This is a challenging title for the industry, which is confronted with both a capacity and a competency challenge today. With this in mind, the seminar was an important and worthwhile event where members picked up new ideas from each other and were able to discuss the demands they each experienced in their own businesses.
Knut Boe, Technip
IMCA President 2007-8
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