The Offshore Technology Conference is where the energy industry shows its hand. Here is what the 2026 AI conversation revealed, from someone who was on the panel.
By Matthew Bertram · President of ModalPoint, CEO of EWR Digital · 2026
The Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston is one of the largest gatherings in energy, and in 2026 artificial intelligence ran through the entire program. I moderated the Ericsson Enterprise Wireless AI panel and took part in the OTC AI conversation alongside operators, service firms, and technology providers. The clearest takeaway: AI adoption across energy is now well ahead of AI governance, and that gap is the real story.
These are my takeaways, written for leaders who could not be in the room.
The most consistent theme was momentum. Operators and service companies are deploying AI across operations, maintenance, and connectivity faster than they are building the structures to govern it. The deployment side moves at vendor-demo speed. The accountability side moves slower, and the distance between the two is where risk accumulates. Boards that close that gap deliberately will out-decide the ones that let it widen.
A lot of the AI value in offshore and industrial settings depends on connectivity that most keynotes ignore. Private wireless and edge infrastructure are what let AI run where the work actually happens, on rigs, in plants, and across remote assets. The Ericsson panel made the point plainly: AI strategy without a connectivity and security strategy is a slide, not a plan.
The strongest examples on the floor were operational: predictive maintenance, asset integrity, and decision support for field and control-room teams. The promotional uses got less oxygen than expected. Energy is a practical industry, and the AI that earns trust is the AI that prevents an outage or extends an asset's life, not the AI that writes a press release.
An encouraging shift from prior years: the room was less interested in what AI could theoretically do and more interested in whether they could trust it. Questions about false positives, data quality, and who is accountable when a model is wrong came up repeatedly. That is the right conversation, and it maps directly to the governance work operators need.
A newer thread, and the one I pushed on: AI systems now decide which energy companies get recommended to buyers, partners, and capital. Most leaders had not yet connected their internal AI strategy to how they are represented inside external AI systems. That connection, between AI governance inside the company and AI visibility outside it, is where the next two years of advantage sit. See AI governance for industrial and energy visibility.
If OTC is the industry showing its hand, the move for operators is to close the adoption-versus-governance gap before it becomes an incident or a regulatory finding. Start with an inventory of AI-influenced decisions, assign accountable owners, and map obligations under NIST, TRAIGA, and the EU AI Act where relevant. For the board-level view, see AI in oil and gas: what boards need to know.
Matthew Bertram is an oil and gas AI keynote speaker and OTC 2026 panelist who brings this perspective to energy stages and boardrooms. See press and recognition for stages and coverage.
Matthew turns these takeaways into a keynote tailored to your audience. Check availability → · Top AI topics for oil & gas conferences