World's largest offshore technology conference starts in Houston amid oil bust

Delegates from over 120 countries and regions are meeting here to solve technical challenges and share best practices at the world's largest offshore technology meeting, which opened Monday.

The event has a packed agenda with more than 80 technical sessions, topical breakfasts, luncheons and panels. Highlights at the gathering include the application of geoscience technology to the energy industry.

The oil and gas industry has been fluctuating since mid-2014, and the oil bust has deadly impact upon the energy industry with energy giants across the world having cut their spending budgets and jobs.

The oil bust also forced a lot of companies to abandon their plans to attend this year's global event for technologies and products. Attendance peaked in 2014 with 108,161, but the figure reduced last year to 94,880.

Organizers believe that this year's event is more important than ever as global drillers seek new technologies and practices to increase efficiency, lower costs and become more competitive with land-based drillers tapping shale deposits.

New technologies are creating environments with greater efficiencies and safety in the offshore and onshore oil fields, said Bernard Looney, upstream chief executive of oil and gas giant BP, which is relying more on automation and data analytics to produce oil and gas with fewer people on the payroll. Endi