LONDON –  The head of Royal Dutch Shell says that his company would never have made the mistakes that led to BP's devastating Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

But Shell CEO Peter Voser acknowledges that the industry as a whole is not prepared to deal with a spill of that size.

Voser told an oil conference in London on Tuesday that from what he knows today "Shell clearly would have drilled this well in a different way and would have had more options to prevent the accident from happening."

But Voser adds that there are lessons to be learned from the Deepwater Horizon explosion for the whole industry.

Oil industry officials are trying to shift the spotlight from the Gulf spill at the gathering — stressing the growing importance of Iraq for oil supplies.