— next event slated for 14 -17 February, 2023

THE recently concluded International Energy Conference and Expo has accomplished 12 main areas of success and has laid a foundation for the next edition of the event slated for 14 -17 February, 2023.

According to the organisers of the Conference and Expo, the event landed 32 sponsors and saw 822 conference attendees, which included members of the diaspora and had 153 exhibitors.

Some 47 speakers also delivered presentations at the conference which was held under the theme, “Charting a sustainable energy future.”

Come next year, organisers are hoping to make the event even bigger and better with the inclusion of more industries and conversations on how those are adapting to sustainable measures.

“We want to see more sectors involved. Industries like [sic] the mining and logging sector[s] and just to continue to build on the conversations that were already taking place inside [the conference this year],” Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Angenie Abe said during a press briefing held on Thursday at the Marriott Hotel, where the conference was held.

Though the ccnference was held as a result of Guyana’s growing oil-and-gas industry, it sought to focus on broader discussions in Guyana beyond oil and gas, and be inclusive of conversations around climate change and sustainability, as well as diversified economic development.

The event was organised, and entirely privately funded, by the newly formed company, International Energy Conference and Expo Inc., which is headed by Chairman Anthony Whyte. The supporting team was made up almost entirely of young Guyanese and Abel emphasised that this, of itself, was an achievement.

Abel was joined at Thursday’s media briefing by Director of Communications Alex Graham and the pair outlined the various benchmarks the conference met and goals attained.
They noted that 12 key goals were accomplished.

“We’ve seen a lot of comments in the public domain about whether the conference was effective or successful. Many of those are from people who set their own agendas for us and then charged us with not accomplishing [their] agenda. We had a clear agenda, we achieved everything on that agenda, and in some places we surpassed even our own expectations with respect to that agenda,” Graham related.

BEYOND OIL AND GAS
Graham noted that broadening the conversations about energy to be beyond just oil and gas was one of the foremost goals of the event and that was achieved with resounding success. .

“Oil and gas is significant but only as a component of the broader energy conversation. We brought to the table conversations about energy and sustainability and not just about oil-and-gas exploration,” he pointed out.

This goal, he further noted, was accomplished through the conversations generated in the bringing together of policy makers, industry practitioners and professionals and professors.

“We had all of those groups represented having a single discussion about what the energy future will look like, what the outlook is like for the world and what the outlook is like for Guyana, in terms of what is happening in the world. That’s a significant conversation we were able to advance,” he said.

Other areas Graham and Abel outlined as goals met by the event included: creating an enabling environment for high-level business-to-business engagements, facilitating business-to-small-business engagements; bringing together of the world’s biggest names in the energy sector to an audience in Guyana; creating opportunities for business-to-government and government-to-government engagements and the creation of deals and partnerships with local businesses, among others.

Graham also addressed comments in the public about the number of local businesses which participated in the exhibition and explained that what took place at the Marriott cannot be simplified and measured by the number of Guyanese booths.

OPPORTUNITIES
“The way to judge what local businesses can benefit from this is not just to walk around and count how many booths we had, but equally count how many opportunities were opened up for local businesses as a result; and we need to take that into consideration,” Graham noted.

“There’s a lot of talk about what percentage of the exhibitors were Guyanese businesses or not. The fact that we brought some of the biggest names in the sector to Georgetown was significant for Guyanese businesses. In this industry, we are new players, so the bulk of the companies in this are going to be international companies,” Graham noted.

A total of 40 booths at the exhibition component of the event were Guyanese-owned; however, over 30 additional Guyanese businesses were also afforded the opportunity to showcase their products and services at “The Duty-Free Shop,” another exhibition section that was specifically created at the Umana Yana, a few corners way from the hotel, to provide exposure to small businesses.

Graham emphasised that creating conversations and linkages between Guyanese businesses and international entities outweighs the benefit of simply having a booth at the expo and suggested the addition of a scheduled ‘meet up’ between small businesses in Guyana and international businesses as a feature in the next hosting to maximise Guyanese benefiting from the event.