In the May/June issue of Drilling Contractor magazine, IADC Chair Jeremy Thigpen considers how much innovation will play a key role in driving the industry forward.
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Thigpen: Industry Needs to Innovate Itself Forward
We possess the distinct advantage of having the best and the brightest minds to tackle these challenges and push us forward to further improve safety, reliability and efficiency while reducing fuel consumption and emissions.
Thigpen has championed innovation in his tenure as Transocean CEO, developing and investing in technologies to improve operational performance. He highlights the Offshore Technology Conference as an important industry event that cultivates this types of forward-facing mindset:
It is a truly inspiring event, and I encourage everyone in our industry to participate, using it as a prompt for incremental improvement of existing technologies and as a springboard for the exploration of new ideas that will invariably continue to propel our industry.
Thigpen discusses how important this type of commitment has been for Transocean’s success, citing new equipment innovations as a determining factor in maintaining their competitive edge in a quickly evolving industry. In trying to push the envelope on what can be achieved with increasing hoisting capacity, dynamic positioning, and ultra-deepwater operations, Thigpen concludes his editorial by repeating why continual focus on innovation, advocacy, and recruitment is important for the drilling industry:
We must keep drilling to meet the global demands of a world whose economies and people rely upon the oil and gas we help produce each day.
Read Jeremy Thigpen’s entire editorial on the DC Magazine website or for more professional background read DC Magazine’s profile interview with Jeremy Thigpen.
