FORGET, for the moment at least, the downturn in the North Sea and the local implications that flow from an oil price that is likely to remain roughly where it is now for some time to come.
Offshore Europe represents the timely opportunity for the North Sea-based industry to showcase its products and services to the world.
The activity around the event confirms that there are still plenty of major investments in the global industry which need the expertise that has been accumulated here.
I happen to be writing this in Baku, a city to which many Aberdonians need no introduction.
It’s a few years since I was here and the transformation is astonishing as the country’s oil and gas wealth has been translated into a showcase capital city.
But the immediately pertinent point is that Azerbaijan alone, according to UKTI, is offering £11billion worth of export opportunities to British companies over the next few years, as production of both oil and gas continue to expand.
This is a market in which there has been a long-term strategy of working closely with government to put our companies in pole position, and it has worked.
Just as in the late 1990s, companies which have grown up on the back of the North Sea now have to internationalise their outlooks.
Offshore Europe - for which the oil and gas world comes to Aberdeen - is the ideal place to do it.
There is plenty of advice and support available but the key factor is the mindset of the companies themselves in accepting new challenges.
Government can certainly help.
A few months ago, UK Export Finance announced a line of credit worth up to $1billion to support our companies in Mexico as it expands its offshore exploration programme.
The Mexican government was party to the agreement, so they want the UK industry to be there.
Announcements of this kind are fine but it will be interesting to track how much of this facility is taken up and by whom.
UK Export Finance is the revamped version of the old ECGD (Export Credits Guarantee Department) and is trying to be more user-friendly and particularly to send out the message that it can support SMEs as well as the big companies, particularly in the construction and defence sectors, with which its predecessor was mainly associated.
There is an office in Scotland, embedded within SDI, and it has a key role to play in supporting our oil and gas sector as companies seek out new global markets.
It also looks as if the oil and gas team in UKTI will be protected from the latest round of cutbacks – and so it should be at this difficult time for the industry.
But difficulty also leads to opportunities.
Once companies start to think in terms of exporting their products and services, or expanding them into more challenge markets, they rarely look back.
That is the spirit in which Offshore Europe 2015 should be approached and there will be many positive outcomes as a result.