OTC 2025: Flexibility, digital fluency key to facing offshore challenges, says Weatherford CEO

In keeping with the overall themes raised on day one of OTC 2025, Weatherford CEO Girish Saligram discussed some of the major challenges facing the offshore industry as a whole in an executive dialogue panel on Monday.  While conversation ranged over a variety of issues, Saligram opened the dialogue with a single word to describe the current state of the offshore market: “turbulent.”

Addressing a challenging climate

According to Saligram, there have been “tremendous declines in several parts of the market,” which have been followed by lower oil prices to create a more challenging climate for new projects, exploration and production.  Yet he remained optimistic about the opportunities that remain for the offshore industry.  “Offshore really gives you a much longer cycle and more resilient [setup],” he made a point to say, citing Weatherford’s broad services portfolio for some of his optimism.

Even so, Saligram also pointed out during the discussion that several critical challenges face the offshore sector: the cost of services and maintaining a skilled workforce.  In terms of services costs, Saligram emphasized that prices would need to come down in order for the industry to truly get back on track.  In the meantime, improvements in well bores and drilling, as well as to the ways operators drive production, hold promise for driving down costs, especially when it comes to digital transformation.  Still, Saligram pointed out that advancements in technology face cost woes of their own in terms of companies being reluctant to pull the trigger on large up-front costs, even in the case of long-term savings.

Digital aptitude in the workforce

The other major issue Saligram outlined involved a challenge common to the oil and gas industry as a whole: training and maintaining talent.  One part of the challenge, he said, was the need for new and improved training for both current and incoming talent.  The industry needs to “make sure the workforce of tomorrow is more digitally fluent than the workforce of today,” he said, emphasizing that general resources to reinforce literacy in new technology was critical.  At the core of the new workforce—and indeed, the existing one—is that “people don’t want to sit doing the same activity for 20 years—that world doesn’t exist, if it ever did.”  The emerging reality of the industry workforce is that wearing many hats and being familiar with varied technology will be more important than ever.  To that end, Saligram noted that a wholistic view, including digital technologies training, would be ideal to equip future talent.

Flexibility is key

Above all, however, he emphasized that flexibility in the varied challenges to the industry will be the key to success.  While the challenges of the 2020 pandemic and Weatherford’s own prior bankruptcy have begun to abate in the years since, Saligram noted that it is vital that the industry always be ready to deal with unprecedented circumstances, as the current economic and geopolitical concerns once again increase the pressure.  Despite the current challenges and those to come, he remained positive; “I’m excited about what our industry is doing, and Weatherford is at the forefront of that.”