Nurturing the green shoots of upstream growth

A combination of cuts to upstream capital spending and steepening well decline rates will threaten global supply security, industry leaders warn

As companies doubled down on cutting costs over the past two years, a leaner and more efficient upstream industry has started to emerge. That was one of the key messages from the Upstream session at AOGC 2017 on 8 May, which saw leading industry figures chart new routes for upstream success in a panel appropriately entitled the Green Sheets of Growth. Shaikh Nawaf al-Sabah, chief executive of Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Expansion Company, kicked off proceedings by underscoring the sheer scale of the disinvestment seen under the low-price climate. "About $1 trillion has been removed as capex from companies' development plans," he said, noting this has had an inevitable impact on exploration succ