Dear SPE London members and colleagues,

It is a great honor and pleasure for me to serve as the new Chair of SPE London and write my first Letter for our online magazine.

While I am very excited to start my work with the Section from September 2018, I would like to reflect on another great operational year led by Carolina Coll, our past Chair.

The London Section serves a wide community including E&P operator and service companies, technical and management consultancies, global financial services and Universities. The various events held throughout the year enabled us to fully deliver on our mission to share technical knowledge and help members advance their potential.

The monthly Technical Dinner Programme provided members with lectures from leading industry and academia experts. We covered a wide range of industry issues on reservoir, drilling, projects and operations. The events’ format, which consists of technical presentations followed by networking and a refreshments buffet, provides guests with a valuable opportunity to connect with their peers.

Continuing Education included the Annual Introduction to the E&P Seminar and Career in Transition events. The former attracted much attention from the non-technical community eager to find out more about the many, varied aspects of the Oil & Gas Industry, while the Members in Transition (MiT) event was aimed at exploring options when considering a change from current technical roles. This MiT seminar proved inspirational, and encouraged networking in potential new areas of employment.

The section also held a series of quarterly Business Development seminars, reaching out to the Oil & Gas Financial Services sector. Started in 2016, such seminars are very popular and always sell-out extremely fast. This year’s topics included: Oil and Gas M&A, Private Equity in Oil & Gas, and Investment interest in Eastern Mediterranean hydro carbon and infrastructure assets.

SPE London Women in Energy Committee held another very successful one-day seminar in June, which attracted more than 150 delegates and leading industry speakers. Such an event has already become a landmark event for the London Section. The focus of the seminar was on promoting the gender balance in the energy industry with a panel session on unconscious biases – how to acknowledge and avoid them. (See David Mahoney’s article on page 9.)

The Young Professionals’ committee was also busy this year, arranging site visits to service companies’ laboratories (EXPRO PVT lab) and offices (Schlumberger Technology Centre, IHS Markit Technical Day, and BCG Intro to Management Consulting in Oil & Gas).

We continued to support seven Student Chapters in Universities across the country, providing funding, support with the Student Paper contest, and discount pricing on Section events.

All the above would have been impossible without the support from volunteers who dedicated their time and efforts to deliver on the SPE mission. Please visit our website www.spe-london.org/ to find out more about the board and our officers.

We always welcome new volunteers to help us in various aspects of SPE London activities. Some of these roles may require investing a substantial portion of your time, such as representing the section governing body (the Board), chairing one of our committees or maintaining the Section accounts. However, other roles may be relatively light in terms of time investment – for example, helping one of our committees in developing our seminars and conferences.

If you are interested in getting involved with us – please contact us on: SPELondon@spemail.org. Or get in touch through our social media channels: Facebook (www.facebook.com/SPELondon), Linkedin (www.linkedin.com/company/spe-london-section), Twitter (twitter.com/spelondon).

I wish you all a great summer holiday and hope to see you at our upcoming events!

Best regards,

Olga Bradulina, SPE London Chair