Emerging Frontiers: Collaboration

Abstract

President's column One of the personal objectives I took as president was to increase the extent in which SPE collaborates with other professional societies and other industries. This is important for two reasons. First, I think we all will agree that meeting the world’s increasing energy demand is becoming more challenging. Reservoirs are becoming more difficult to find and produce. They are generally smaller, more complex, and exist in increasingly challenging environments, whether in the Arctic, beneath 10,000 ft of water, or at very high pressures and temperatures. We need all the help we can get from experts in other domains, other industries, and nascent technologies being developed for different uses. Second, project costs are increasing at a much higher rate than new production; it is taking more technology, effort, and capital expenditure (Capex) to produce another barrel of oil and another thousand cubic feet of gas. Over the past 10 years, exploration and production (E&P) Capex spend has grown approximately by 400% while global oil production is up by only 15%. In just the past 3 years, the upstream E&P industry has spent on average USD 600 billion per year, and the only part of the oil production base that has grown significantly is the liquids production from North American unconventional resource plays (Kibsgaard 2014). The relatively easy oil - the first trillion barrels or so we have already produced - has been developed and the next trillion will be much more costly and require more sophisticated, integrated technologies and processes. This is why we must reach out to other industries and societies to identify new processes, different ideas, and innovative technologies.