It’s not easy finding a hotel room in Houston this week, and the reason is not the influx of media-types for the Lay-Skilling trial.
The Offshore Technology Conference — one of Houston’s oldest and largest annual conventions — begins today at the Reliant Park convention facilities. As over 50,000 engineers and industry executives descend upon Houston this week for the conference, more than 2,000 exhibitors from about 30 countries will fill nearly every cranny of the almost 500,000 square feet of exhibit space at Reliant Center.
The OTC covers state-of-the-art technology for offshore drilling, exploration, production, and environmental protection, and it is the world energy industry’s foremost event for the development of offshore resources. This is the 37th straight year that industry engineers, technicians, executives, operators, scientists, and managers have gathered in Houston for the OTC, and the conference’s exhibit floor on the floor of Reliant Stadium — including massive and specialized equipment and technological devices used in the extraction of oil and gas from offshore locations — is one of the more fascinating that you will ever see at any convention.
Although the OTC is an industry conference rather than one that caters to the masses, the OTC has always been interesting in that it tends to mirror the state of the local Houston economy. During the early 1970’s through the early 1980’s, the conference boomed as increased global demand for energy and Middle East embargoes ratched up the price of oil. After conference attendance topped out at almost 110,000 in 1982, the prolonged bust in the energy industry in the mid-1980’s resulted in substantially decreased attendance, as in 1984 when the conference was held without an exhibition of equipment and technology at all. In the late 1980’s, the expense of putting on the conference even prompted some industry participants to question whether the convention had become an overpriced luxury.
Nevertheless, over the past 15 years or so, the OTC has grown steadily to regain its stature as one of the key annual oil and gas industry conferences, and last year’s attendance of more than 50,000 was the highest since the 1982 record. A pass to the exhibit hall is usually easy to obtain, so check it out if you have a chance. It’s well worth the effort.