The Bight Basin program in 2016 requires a greenfields site to be established near Adelaide by international supply base firm ASCO. Swire was a bidding partner in that process.

"This is a great opportunity for the industry because you have a line-up of a number of different operators who want to work off the Great Australian Bight, so why should they stick to their traditional supply chain?" he asked, questioning the value of strictly separated procurement processes.

Santos, Murphy Oil, Statoil and Bight Petroleum are also all looking at seismic and drilling operations offshore SA over the next few years.

"Right now they are looking at efficiencies and new ways of doing things, because the market dynamics are driving that behaviour. What we are aiming to do with ASCO is provide a multi-user base, so we can provide a multiple range of services for multiple customers from the one location," Parsons said.

"That is vastly different to the traditional Australian model, but it is not in the North Sea where they have been doing this for 20 years."

With the ASCO base in Adelaide, the service companies are bringing to Australia the sort of collaboration that has allowed the North Sea oil industry to thrive for 20 years.

Parsons believes the Adelaide option will prove to the industry the benefits of adopting a new model.

"I know that some of the operators who are planning for Adelaide are starting to talk together," he said.

It is an opportunity to fundamentally change the way the industry thinks and win significant efficiencies, Parsons said.

Parsons told Energy News that with E&P concerns cutting costs and winding back spending in response to dropping oil prices, it will take the "unfreezing" of habits to force a behavioural shift as companies can't cut their way to efficiency.

"Hopefully, when things pick up and our habits freezes again we will be doing things in a whole new way," he said.

Swire, which is the biggest global shipping concern in the world, started its own internal changes a few years ago, moving from simply "supplying the box" to integrating its offerings with bespoke engineering solutions across the value chain - allowing it to offer its clients more.

"With Baker Hughes we used to be just a tank provider, now we are a tank designer and we are providing modified tanks to suit the clients' desires, and we are also doing inspection, maintenance and testing of Baker Hughes' own fleet," Parsons said.

"The business is becoming broader. We can now offer complementary services because the market behaviour has shifted and the traditional customer base is more open to thinking differently.

"Companies like Woodside, Chevron and Apache don't need to silo their supply chain, so we are rebundling to supply that change."

Swire recently partnered with other groups to prise the Apache Energy contract from Toll Holdings, which had supplied Apache for almost 20 years. Swire believes that offering multiple services to customers will force a fundamental shift in the industry.

After all, why should the chemical company simply deliver its cargo to Woodside Petroleum and leave the oil and gas company to worry about the storage, which is not a core business, Parsons asked.

Instead, companies like Swire can now supply both the goods and the services, allowing Woodside to do what it does best: drill and produce hydrocarbons.

The same thinking is evident in Shell's alliance with Technip for development of the Prelude FLNG. Swire is in the mix too, providing logistical solutions for the ambitious project.

Like many, Swire sees future growth in the energy sector as inevitable.

"I think what is happening now is quite fortunate, it is an opportunity for us to really embed a different way of thinking and different service skills into the industry … shaping the industry from within, rather than just supplying to it," Parsons said.

He concluded that current ructions in the industry were "a good shake of the tree" that would force smarter procurement habits to develop.