LONDON: A taskforce is being launched in an effort to improve efficiency and collaboration in the oil and gas industry.
Industry body Oil & Gas UK said the Efficiency Task Force (ETF) would support the drive to maximise economic recovery from the UK Continental Shelf.
ETF will build on informal arrangements already in place between companies.
The move follows a steep decline in the price of oil which has more than halved over the past year.
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The taskforce will focus on three themes – business process, standardisation and co-operation, culture and behaviours.
The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark, was hovering around $50 a barrel on Tuesday, having been well over $100 in September last year.
Stephen Marcos Jones, business development director at Oil and Gas UK, told BBC Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “We’re certainly not looking at decommissioning specifically.
“We’re taking a three-pronged approach, looking across three themes – cooperation, culture and behaviours, standardisation in the sector and business process – how that can be optimised.”
He added: “The whole point of the taskforce is to bring forward all of these great initiatives that companies have already started and make them pan-industry initiatives because unless we can get these pan-industry initiatives working we’re not going to see the efficiency gains that this industry needs to ensure a sustainable future.”