On April 10^th OGRC’s Steering Committee held another of its monthly meetings. For myself this was the fourth meeting since EBN joined in January. Its strikes me that this meetings are always held in good spirit and at the same time are effective in taking concrete decisions and having brief discussions.

First of all, we looked back on the successful event of March 21^st in The Hague with the theme “The Digital Transformation”, this in the context of our central theme “Embracing the Energy Transition”. All in all, 176 people participated. However, we also discussed our concern about ‘no shows’ (with cancellation), this time there were 36. It was decided that from now on we will be asking for an entrance fee with the aim of reducing this undesired effect. For the next event on June 27^th we will have an easy and effective web-based payment system in place for you.

Regarding the several working groups there is a discussion about which of the groups are most active and most successful and in which cases there is some doubt because of limited apparent interest. We will continuously be evaluating this and also ask you to convey your own views on this if you have them. As an example we had to cancel the session on geothermal energy because nobody had been able to come up with an interesting program, also attendance would have been small. On the other hand the first gathering of a new working group on ‘Community Engagement’ was generally well received.

Most of the rest of our meeting was around the preparations for our next event on Thursday June 27^th. The theme is “From my backyard to the North Sea”. Our timing for this topic seems to be good. Recently, there has been a lot of attention for the governance of the Dutch part of the North Sea. It’s a busy part of the world with various functions which may be in competition for the use of space, but that may sometimes have the potential for synergies. Our North Sea is being used for the production of energy, for fishery and society wants to preserve or even increase important natural environment values. This summer a process called the “Noordzeeoverleg” is expected to be completed in which the various interests will have to balanced and policy makers will make decisions. We will have a number of interesting speakers lined up for you.

Finally, we discussed a request from the World Petroleum Council to collaborate in a forthcoming event in Q1 of 2020 aiming at writing a report about the energy transition. This process will be facilitated by KPMG.

We are looking forward to meeting you on our next event in June 27, meanwhile happy to receiving your feedback or comments via rene@oilandgasreinvented.com, or contact Connie for any questions you may have on Oil and Gas Reinvented via connie@oilandgasreinvented.com.

Best regards,

Barthold Schroot on behalf of the Steering Committee Oil & Gas Reinvented