Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen!
It is a pleasure for me to join you at this luncheon! Beside the excellent food, we have been given impressive examples of innovative work within the Norwegian oil and gas cluster. Today’s presentations emphasize the very high quality among all the nominees for the 2006 ONS Innovation Award.

I will shortly hand out this year’s awards. But first I would like to make some remarks.
Norway is a major oil and gas producer. We have several large fields that need to improve recoveries and lower costs because they are into tail end production after decades of successful harvesting. Thus, in the years to come, value creating on the NCS will be more technologically demanding and knowledge intensive than is the case to day.

In order to meet these and other challenges, “Oil and Gas in the 21st century” – OG21 – was established in 2001. The objective of this initiative was to unite the oil and gas industry in a common national strategy. Norway’s cooperative approach – authorities, industry, institutions and academia working towards identified challenges and opportunities, is more important than ever.

We have used public money to support and guide R&D efforts to foster good resource management since the beginning. In 2006 the Government allocated increased funds to petroleum research to around 400 million kroner. The Government’s contribution in R&D is channelled mainly through the programmes Petromaks and DEMO2000. These programs are intended to contribute to attaining the goals set in the national technology strategy OG21.

Several operators of mature fields on the NCS have set ambitious targets for their fields, and the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate has established a new target for oil reserves: five billion additional barrels by 2015. We need motivated people and new innovations to achieve that target!

That brings me back to the 2006 ONS Innovation Awards.
The jury has told me that they received good applications in all categories. You have seen them presented on the screen during the luncheon, but let me remind you who the five finalists in each category are. In alphabetical order:

Innovation: Aker Kværner – with two entries among the final five – FMC, Schlumberger and Ulstein Design AS.

Small and Mediums Sized Enterprises (SMEs): Multi Phase Meters AS, PROPURE, Tomax AS, Well Processing AS and Well Technology AS.

I will now announce the winner in each category with a short version of the jury’s reasons.

I ask that a representative for each company join me at the stage to receive their award once I have finished calling the winners, announcing the individual receiving the special ONS award for knowledge building and motivation last. That is a new award handed out for the first time this year. It will only be awarded if a worthy winner is identified. A short presentation of this year’s winner will follow my announcement. I believe the person will be widely recognized, both in Norway and abroad.

The winners of the ONS Innovation Committee Awards 2006 are:

Innovation: Kværner AS for their new subsea multiphase pumping system. The jury recognizes the innovative way the systems have been put together, and the potential for adding value from fields around the world.

SME: Tomax AS for their anti-stall technology to improve drilling time and avoid problems by actively regulating the load on the drill bit downhole. The jury recognizes an innovative approach to an old problem and a great saving potential for both existing and new fields. Drilling is a large part of the costs in our industry.

Special award: The first ONS innovation committee special award recognizes an individual who has influenced generations of sub-surface resource people both inside and outside Norway. He is still active in our industry; as a matter of fact he has just come out with an important book on Oxford Press, on subjects that have occupied him most of his working life, namely prudent resource management and how to provide frameworks that opens for successful cooperation among all the entities involved.

It would take too long to list his many contributions in his different roles. Let me just mentioned the Ekofisk water-flood, Troll gas injection into Oseberg to increase oil recovery and the Troll Oil success among the big money makers his insistence on prudent resource principles helped realize.

It is my honour to call on the first resource director in the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, today an independent consultant, Mr. Farouk Al-Kasim.

I hope he has many more years to inspire new generations of resource management staffs. Companies and governments around the world need to be reminded that projects should try to keep options open, whenever possible, to let future innovation, research and development by bright people get more of the reserves out of the ground. Our job is to give people now coming into our industry the possibilities to succeed!