WorldOil

What's new in exploration

NAPE exhibitors miss the mark. Having done a lot of oil and gas prospect marketing over the past eight months, I went to the North American Prospect Expo (NAPE) 2008, February 6−8, with greater-than-usual interest to see how others present their prospects and deals. Unfortunately, many exhibitors missed the mark. Their exhibits were poorly planned and organized. Too many exhibitors failed to meet the most critical needs of attendees by not displaying fundamental prospect summary information like resource size, cost, economic return and timing of projects at their booths. Instead, potential buyers were forced to extract this data from exhibitors in an often time-consuming process that limited their ability to learn about other opportunities. The event was, nonetheless, a success, because social networking apparently redeemed the expo for many of the 16,000 in attendance at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, despite other shortcomings.