With about 4500 members worldwide in the Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering (OOAE) Division of ASME, we are obligated to provide our members with the best technical information, opportunities and services within the areas of ocean, offshore and arctic engineering. Through the years, OOAE has focused not only on the yearly OMAE conference but also on promoting OOAE to young engineers, providing opportunities to students and working more internationally by co-sponsoring locally organized symposia.

Largely owing to a unique group of volunteers, especially members of the OOAE Executive Committee (EC) and Extended Executive Committee (EEC) (please refer to http://www.ooae.org/acrobat_files/rosters/roster0708.pdf), it has been possible to be active in achieving the mandate of the Division: promoting technological progress and international cooperation in ocean, offshore and Arctic engineering, and in recovering resources, such that environmental and economic successes are achieved safely.
One of the successes in 2007 was the 26th OMAE Conference, which was held June 10-15 at the Paradise Point Resort and Marina on Mission Bay in San Diego. It was a rousing success with 470 papers presented in 12 symposia, and with 729 total attendees over the five-day event. We had 13 sponsors and exhibitors which helped make it a financial success. We held our first Sailing Regatta not only using all of the Marina’s boats but a few more as well that drew a large group of participants.

In addition to the regular symposia, we featured a special symposium on Ocean Renewable Energy, Ocean Measurements and a symposium dedicated to Professor Robert Dean. We also held a symposium on Petroleum Technology organized by Glenn MacDonald and Andrew Wojtanowicz of the Petroleum Division. Charles Smith of the Minerals Management Service and Cengiz Ertekin of University of Hawaii organized the Renewable Energy Symposium and Dick Seymour of Scripps Institution of Oceanography organized the Ocean Measurement Symposium. These symposia will continue in 2008.

On the weekend prior to the conference, we also held two short courses, i.e., Vortex Induced Vibrations and Computational Fluid Dynamics. Both of these proved quite successful.  The success of OMAE 2007 was largely due to the support of many volunteers, including all the technical organizers, reviewers and authors, as well as the conference management, ASME-IPTI. The Conference would not have achieved this level of success without the huge efforts provided by the Chairmen of the Conference, Dr. John Halkyard and his co-chairs, Dr. Richard J. Seymour and Dr. Barbara Fletcher. During the planning of the Conference, OOAE and IPTI initiated a new initiative to recruit more engineers into the offshore industry. With the help of four sponsors (Shell, Global Santa Fe, ABS and Technip), we were able to offer scholarships for 40 young professionals who are currently not working in the offshore industry to be able to attend the conference and a special "Outreach for Engineers" forum.

The 27th International Conference on Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering will be held June 15-20 2008 in Estoril, Portugal. It will feature eight traditional symposia and will be complemented by four special symposia. These are:

• Offshore Technology
• Structures, Safety and Reliability
• Materials Technology
• Pipeline and Riser Technology
• Ocean Space Utilization
• Ocean Engineering
• Polar and Arctic Sciences and Technology
• CFD and VIV
• Nick Newman Symposium on Marine Hydrodynamics
• Yoshida and Maeda Special Symposium on Ocean Space Utilization
• Offshore Renewable Energy
• Offshore Measurement and Data Interpretation

In addition, two workshops will also be offered. They are:

1) Industrial Workshop on Risers for Deepwater - Worldwide Field Experiences
2) Industrial Workshop on Advances on Strain-Based Designs of Pipelines

With a record high number of abstracts received so far, we certainly foresee a fruitful conference in June 2008 under the chairmanship of Prof. Carlos Guedes Soares.

In addition to our 2008 OMAE conference, OOAE will present a forum on opportunities for FPSO’s in the Gulf of Mexico, which is to be held in Houston during March 26-27, 2008. The objectives of this workshop are to highlight challenges and opportunities and foster open discussion of experiences in the developments leading to the use of FPSO’s in the Gulf of Mexico. The open forum will weigh perceived and experienced differences in planning and operating FPSO’s in the Gulf of Mexico as compared with other regions and environments, and how this affects the applications of FPSO’s in future development studies. The presented topics will focus on studies/planning, design, regulatory, and operational impact, including:

• Regulatory perspective
• Operator perspective/experience in the Gulf of Mexico
• Comparing the Gulf with other regions around the world
• Stationkeeping and turret issues
• Export challenges
• Riser issues
• Other FPSO designs

In connection with this forum, OOAE together with ASME-IPTI will offer a short course on FPSO to provide you with an overview of seakeeping and offloading aspects of FPSOs and the various choices that are available to address FPSO design issues. Some examples of design issues include vessel and mooring concept selection. The course will be presented by Marin and SBM Atlanta.

OMAE is also co-sponsoring with CORE in National University of Singapore a specialty symposium in Marine Operations Specialty Symposia (MOSS), which is to be held in Singapore during March 6-7, 2008. The need for such a symposium is demonstrated by the boom of shallow and deepwater operations and facility installation activities worldwide from universities, research institutes, third parties, and offshore industries. In general, this symposium will cover all offshore operation and installation-related issues.

As you read this message on OOAE’s website (www.ooae.org), another great newsworthy item in 2007 was that this website has been indexed in ISI Web Knowledge. Thanks to Cengiz Ertekin who keeps this website active and current with updated information for our members and future members around the world.

Looking forward, we are glad to announce that the 2009 OMAE Conference will be held in Hawaii and the 2010 OMAE Conference will be held in Shanghai.

Thank you very much for your support and we will see you in Estoril, Portugal!

OOAE Division Chair
2007 – 2008
Dr. Xiaozhi (Christina) Wang
American Bureau of Shipping