Investing in an exciting petroleum province

mayo | environment | news report Wednesday August 02, 2006 05:33 by Terry - Rossport Solidarity Camp

‘Exploring Atlantic Ireland 2006’, oil and gas industry conference to take place in Dublin this November.

‘Exploring Atlantic Ireland 2006’ is the name of an up-coming conference in the Burlington Hotel, the sub-heading on its promotional brochure reads: “Investing in an exciting petroleum province”. The conference features a series of workshops on technical and bureaucratic issues involved in oil and gas extraction, plus a couple of plenary sessions with key speakers.
According to the brochure: “The North Atlantic offers great potential in terms of hydrocarbon opportunities. This conference will look at the North Atlantic as a whole and look at the potential of resources in Irish waters in the context of geological data from Canadian, Norwegian, and UK waters.”
“Atlantic Ireland is one of the few remaining regions in the North Atlantic offering opportunities to explore and develop major hydrocarbon resources.”

‘Exploring Atlantic Ireland 2006’ is being organized by bmf Business Services, a consultancy firm based in the North, together with the Petroleum Affairs Division of the Department of Communications, Marine & Natural Resources.
Additionally the conference is supported by a number of other bodies including the Petroleum Infrastructure Programme which is a series of research projects jointly run by the Petroleum Affairs Division and a menagerie of oil companies. Those companies have included: Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Dana, ENI, Shell, Ramco, Total, Statoil, Island Oil & Gas, Providence Resources, Lundin, Agip, Elf, Enterprise, Marathon, Phillips, Anadarko, BG, BP, Conoco, Mobil, and TotalFinaElf. The conference is also supported by the Petroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain an association for geologists, geophysicists and the like working in the industry, the Irish branch of the Energy Institute, another professional body, and the Ireland Newfoundland Partnership (INP).

From their website I gather that bmf Business Services are not a company you hire to organise your conference, but rather hosting these conferences is a part of its business of providing ‘business services’. That is they create an event, and then sell it to you.
Energy Ireland seems to be a big one for them, reaching its tenth year last June.
This was partly sponsored by Shell and had Minister for Communications, Marine, and Natural Resources, Noel Dempsey speaking at it.
Their next conference coming up takes place in the Burlington Hotel Dublin on the 4th and 5th of September and is called ‘Environment Ireland 2006’. As well as various luminaries from the ‘Environmental Protection Agency’ and the boss of super dump builders Greenstar attendees at this conference can hear John Woods director of Friends of the Earth (Northern Ireland) tell them all about an all-island approach to climate change, and Duncan Stewart of TV’s eco eye chairs a meeting.
One would think that bad if one hadn’t read the mini-biography of one of the other speakers Tom Burke “has been a professional environmentalist for 30 years and was formerly Executive Director of Friends of the Earth” and is currently an advisor to Rio Tinto Zinc and was formerly an advisor to British Petroleum.

The ‘Exploring Atlantic Ireland 2006’ conference takes place in the Burlington Hotel Dublin, on November the 8th and November the 9th.
Apparently “The date and venue of the conference has been timed to coincide with the annual dinner of the Irish branch of the Energy Institute which takes place on the first evening of the conference.”