Building Bridges: Reflections

Abstract

President's column My term as president ends at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition next month. I am amazed at how quickly the time has passed. This will be my last column, and so I think it is a good time for a bit of reflection on the organizational and personal goals with which I began my term: Promote new Petroleum Resources Management System (PRMS)—In a previous column, I talked about the development of the PRMS. An important update is that the PRMS served as a major basis for recommendations made in late June to the US Securities and Exchange Commission for rule changes to modernize their reporting requirements for oil and gas companies. Our Oil and Gas Reserves Committee is preparing comments to the Commission on their proposals that relate to PRMS. I presented a briefing about the PRMS at a roundtable session on reserves at the World Petroleum Congress in Madrid in early July. Develop leadership in carbon capture and sequestration (CCS)—I appointed an expert committee to guide SPE in this important area and to promote technical information exchange on best practices and lessons learned relating to CCS. The committee provided an update to the Board in June on upcoming SPE events with sessions on CCS topics, as well as efforts to coordinate our activities with other engineering societies. Support young professionals programs—Our young professionals have great momentum in organizing workshops and programs around the world. I spoke to young professionals, as well as students, in almost every country I went to. I am confident that our industry will be in good hands. I also spoke at the World Petroleum Congress on the importance of industry collaboration to ensure that we attract new talent to the industry. Promote energy education outreach programs to pre-college students—SPE's new Oil and Natural Gas book represents a tremendous opportunity to educate teachers, parents, and students about our industry. I've given copies to company and government leaders, as well as section leaders, throughout my travels this year. We also continue our efforts to collaborate with other professional societies on career outreach, and hope to expand www.energy4me.org to offer geoscience career information as well. Build bridges to universities to help alleviate faculty shortage—High industry demand for petroleum professionals is causing both an inflow of students and an increase in faculty vacancies in the US and elsewhere. To help address the faculty shortage, SPE has created an Adjunct Faculty Clearinghouse on www.spe.org to help academic departments publicize their faculty needs to industry. SPE also recently established 15 new fellowships for graduate students, who may choose a career in teaching.