Live Conference & Online 8 & 9 September 2026
Cutting Cost And Tightening Execution As Bottlenecks Intensify
8 & 9 September 2026
Cutting Cost And Tightening Execution As Bottlenecks Intensify
8 & 9 September 2026
An event designed for VPs and Heads of Upstream Assets and Facilities as well as supervisors and engineers - this initiative is designed to help operators lower operating costs, improve facility efficiency, strengthen power reliability, and manage growing infrastructure constraints — without slowing production growth or adding unnecessary complexity.
As water disposal pressures, gas takeaway limitations, aging infrastructure, leaner teams, and tighter capital discipline continue to collide, facilities leaders are being forced to rethink how assets are operated, streamlined, expanded, and supported in 2026.
Through practical operator-led discussions, this event will help you benchmark how peers are simplifying brownfield complexity, improving infrastructure performance, reducing operational friction, managing reliable power, and ensuring automation and measurement investments are delivering measurable operational outcomes — not just more systems to manage.
Most importantly, the event is built around what is actually working in the field to improve margins, maintain reliability, and support disciplined growth under increasingly demanding operating conditions.
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Over the last several weeks we conducted more than 40 in-depth research conversations with upstream operators — large, medium, and small — across the Permian Basin, Eagle Ford, and other onshore oil-producing regions across North America.
Irrespective of operator size, the same operational pressures and trade-offs surfaced repeatedly:
Many operators are now managing facilities infrastructure shaped by acquisitions, temporary workarounds, shifting production priorities, and years of incremental modifications layered on top of one another.
At the same time, facilities teams are under increasing pressure to:
…all whilst operating under tighter capital discipline and greater pressure to deliver predictable operational performance.
More or less every operator we spoke to ultimately came back to the same core challenge:
How do you execute more effectively under tighter operational and financial conditions — without creating new infrastructure, reliability, or workforce risks elsewhere in the system?
That question now sits at the centre of facilities strategy across North America — forming the lens through which this year’s agenda explores key issues such as power reliability, execution quality, infrastructure simplification, brownfield optimisation, electrification ROI, and operational flexibility.
Reliable Power Remains A Major Strategic Facilities Issue In 2026 - What Are The Latest Approaches For Different Situations? And What Does ROI Look Like On The Earlier Investment Decisions?
As operators increase reliance on electrified systems and grid-connected infrastructure, power availability itself is increasingly becoming a constraint — particularly as production systems become more interconnected and operational downtime becomes less tolerable.
At the same time, many operators are now entering the phase where they can finally evaluate whether electrification strategies initiated several years ago are genuinely delivering the operational and financial returns originally expected.
Operators are increasingly asking:
To address this, multiple sessions throughout the conference focus on:
Portfolio Optimisation Is Becoming Just As Important As Individual Asset Performance
One of the clearest conclusions from the research process was that facility performance is once again becoming central to profitability, operational predictability, and future competitiveness.
Facilities strategy can no longer be separated into either expansion or rationalisation. In many cases, operators are now having to pursue both at the same time across different parts of the asset base.
The case studies will help you determine how to adapt or upgrade facilities systems that are:
That balancing act now sits at the centre of this year’s agenda.
Day One begins with a broader portfolio-wide optimisation perspective focused on how operators are responding to the changing realities of 2026 across both large central facilities and remote sites — not simply at an individual asset level.
Throughout the conference, operators will compare:
Cost Reduction And Execution Quality Are Becoming Increasingly Interconnected
Operators repeatedly told us that the pressure to lower operating cost can no longer be separated from broader discussions around:
Sometimes the challenge is about efficiency.
Increasingly, however, it is about reducing cost whilst still protecting:
Whether discussing contractor performance, workforce capability, instrumentation reliability, the actionability of automation investments, or simplifying inherited operational complexity, operators are increasingly focused on improving execution consistency without creating new operational risks elsewhere across the asset base.
That is why this years agenda places such strong emphasis on practical operational learning and peer exchange across different site situations and use cases — helping attendees benchmark:
Hear How Your Peers Are Addressing The “Temporary Infrastructure” Problem
One of the strongest new themes emerging from the research conversations was the issue of temporary infrastructure quietly becoming increasingly expensive permanent infrastructure.
Whether relating to:
…many operators acknowledged that stopgap solutions are now deeply embedded into day-to-day operations.
The challenge is that improving reliability, lowering operating cost, and simplifying infrastructure increasingly require consolidation and rationalisation of these inherited layers of complexity.
Yet very few operators — whether large or mid-sized — believe they have fully solved this problem.
Most described it as an ongoing work in progress.
As a result, several discussions throughout the conference focus specifically on:
Across North America, facilities simplification is increasingly becoming a major strategic priority rather than simply an operational clean-up exercise.
Standardization Is A Huge Opportunity — But Overstandardization Creates Its Own Risks
Standardization repeatedly surfaced as one of the industry’s biggest opportunities for:
Hear directly from operators about:
Across two days of sessions, discussions, and peer exchange, the agenda is designed to help operators benchmark what is working, where risks are emerging, what strategies are proving scalable, and how others are approaching the difficult trade-offs now shaping facilities’ performance across North America’s onshore oil-producing regions.
We appreciate everyone who contributed insight throughout the research process, and we look forward to welcoming many of you this September.
