Technological innovation and new discoveries are the two factors that will keep the offshore energy industry afloat, said an expert on Tuesday at a trade show of offshore energy technologies and equipment.

Steve Balint, chairman of the ongoing 2013 Offshore Technologies Conference (OTC) in Houston, told Xinhua that this year's event is the largest in the OTC's history beginning in 1969, with more than 650,000 square feet of exhibition area and over 2,700 companies.

He expects that when the four-day event ends Thursday, it will have drawn about the same number of people as last year, or 89,000 attendees.

"We are celebrating our 44th anniversary in Houston," Balint said. "We have recently expanded the OTC family by adding OTC Brazil ... and the Arctic Conference in 2011, and launching OTC Asia in 2014."

He told Xinhua that the OTC's mission "has been solid from day one" as it is "organized and operated exclusively to promote and further the advance of scientific and technical knowledge of offshore resources and environmental matters."

As he sees it, there will be new areas for offshore drilling, such as in Mozambique. And on the technological front, he believes there will be more deep-water and high-pressure or high-temperature operations, and more efforts would be taken to introduce fiber optics, and sub-salt geosciences into the sector.