Our guest shares his views on the development of ICoTA, in particular he outlines the prospects of establishing a Russian Chapter: "Forming a Russian chapter is very exciting. Russia has a large and growing market for coiled tubing and well intervention technologies, and there is a strong desire to increase technical awareness of the products and services available for improving well performance and efficiencies. A Russian ICoTA Chapter will be a great way for the local oil companies, service companies, and equipment manufacturers to communicate and stay in touch with the global technology developments within our well intervention industry."

 

Commenting on the situation in the industry, Fowler states: "I am very positive about the well intervention industry in today’s marketplace, even as we have seen the drilling activity experience a major slowdown since its peak last year, especially in the United States, where a majority of the drilling is targeted at natural gas production. The downturn has led to some significant budget cutbacks and personnel reductions. Although the market demand is down and the economy is struggling, we still need oil and gas, and the challenge is to find ways to maintain or even increase production on existing wells, while doing it very economically. This plays to the strength of coiled tubing services—we often see an increase in coiled tubing services being performed during drilling downturns as operators seek to maintain their cash flows from existing wells".