Comments: Reader Comments

Abstract

Editor's column Every year, JPT surveys the SPE membership to get feedback on how well it is doing and to get suggestions on what improvements could be made to make the publication more useful to its readers. Past reader surveys have led us to increase the number and breadth of the technical topics, include more company and industry news briefs, generate more staff-written articles, and add more case studies. We will likely make additional improvements based on the findings in this latest survey. To the more than 3,000 members who responded, thank you for taking the time to offer your opinions and comments. It will help us publish a magazine that is more useful to you in your jobs and careers. Just over 45% of the respondents work in North America; 77% had more than 10 years of experience in the oil and gas industry; and 29% had been an SPE member for more than 25 years. Just under 42% of respondents were engineers, while 32% were executives or managers. About 60% of respondents work for operating companies and 22% work for service/manufacturing firms. The most popular features in JPT are Technology Update, the summaries of the technical papers, and Technology Applications, underscoring reader interest in both emerging technology and practical applications of existing technology. This is similar to findings in previous surveys. The summaries of SPE technical papers in JPT have routinely ranked high in reader surveys. JPT’s 42-person Editorial Committee, which consists of volunteer members representing all facets of the upstream oil and gas industry, reviews thousands of technical papers each year, recommending the best of them for condensed publication in the magazine. Of the technical topics covered in the magazine, the most popular are mature fields and well revitalization, unconventional resources, multilateral/extended reach, reservoir performance and monitoring, field development projects, and formation evaluation. Asked what technical topics they would like to see more coverage of, respondents favored more papers/articles on various drilling topics, shale gas technology, and economics. Just under 90% of respondents find JPT to be useful to very useful to them in their jobs, and 77% find JPT to be better to significantly better than other magazines serving the upstream oil and gas industry. Three-quarters (76%) rate the content of JPT either very good or excellent, up from 71% last year. The publication’s biggest strengths are considered to be its technical depth and quality, its connection to SPE, and its breadth of coverage. Suggestions for improvement included publishing full-length technical papers rather than summaries, offering more coverage of natural gas projects and issues, and providing more technical detail in articles.