From left: Al-Kaabi in a “ceremonial turnover of the hosting responsibilities” for the next IPTC, which will be held in Malaysia

The largest multi-society, multi-disciplinary oil and gas event in the Eastern hemisphere, the 7th International Petroleum Technology Conference (IPTC) concluded in Doha yesterday.
Held at the Qatar National Convention Centre, the four-day event attracted more than 5,000 oil and gas professionals in what was claimed to be the “most successful” IPTC in the region ever.
“Many of the oil and gas industry’s principal players who attended IPTC 2014 agreed that advancements in the technology and innovation will play key role in fulfilling the world’s ever increasing demand for energy,” Qatar Petroleum said yesterday.
“IPTC has effectively promoted the dissemination of scientific and technological knowledge relating to the exploration, development, production, transportation and processing of oil and natural gas. Technical experts from some 67 countries and 750 organisations have actively discussed pressing issues in the conference sessions and technical workshops,” it said.
The IPTC represents a meeting of minds as it fosters the development of innovative approaches to address the ever-increasing challenges the industry faces to achieve the goal of affordable and environmentally friendly energy.
The youth programme has been a particular highlight as it attracted as many as 110 students from some 31 countries and 67 universities, including 20 Qatari students, in addition to 180 high school students from some 16 schools.
IPTC’s nine-stream conference featured 400 technical and knowledge sharing presentations, 67 technical sessions and six panel sessions on such themes ‘The Future of Integrated Project Management in a Cyclic Environment’, ‘Fundamentals of the Natural Gas Revolution’, ‘Growing the Resource through Upstream Technology’ and ‘Delivering on Evolving Stakeholder Expectations’.
The closing session was chaired by IPTC co-chair Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, QP director (oil & gas ventures).
Al-Kaabi said, “On behalf of the IPTC committees I would again like to express our sincere thanks and gratitude to HH the Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani for his patronage. We would like to thank HE the Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani for his great support and for attending the event to open both the conference and exhibition. We also thank HE the Minister of Energy and Industry Dr Mohamed bin Saleh al-Sada for his support of the event.”
He said, “I would like to thank Qatar Petroleum’s co-hosting of this conference; ExxonMobil and, especially Andrew Swiger, for his role as co-chair of the conference and his valuable contribution. A great many people have made this event a success but none more so than the IPTC board of directors and the four sponsoring societies, namely the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (EAGE), the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). We look forward to the next IPTC Kuala Lumpur and wish you success.”