Winter 99/00 - Petroleum Engineering | The University of Oklahoma

OU Discovery
School of Petroleum and Geological Engineering
And what of the 21st century? I
suggest it will be one of reinvention.
We are already seeing this daily, often
in disturbing fashion. And it is not just
companies and institutions that are
changing, but individuals as well.
What does this mean for our society? It
means we just stand the test of adding
value for our customer - those who are
our customers and those who hopefully
will become customers.
We have lived through the era of reengineering.
Now we are at the front
door of re-invention.
If we look at what our professions
have contributed to the global oil and
gas industry, we get a glimpse of what
is possible in our society. Despite the
daunting challenges of a price environment
that will very likely be lower than
we like, technology has changed the
face of the upstream sector of the
industry.
It has permitted the exploitation of
resources previously thought to be
unrecoverable, and it has made successful
and safe exploration possible in
areas not even on the industry’s radar
screen only two decades ago.
From the prolific and booming years
of the early seventies and eighties
when operation hit record highs, oil
prices succumbed in the mid-eighties,
driving the oil industry into a “survival
mode.” The new realities of the
nineties have brought restructuring
and transformation. Oil majors and
service companies have reevaluated
their business priorities, focusing on
core competencies and outsourcing
more to third parties: the service
providers, and oil prices have succumbed
again! Although they have
now recovered, demand and supply
trends for the long term indicate that
the pre-crisis levels may well be the
highest level of oil prices that we can
expect to see for some time.
The concept of learning organizations
is now predominant and greater
incentives for diversified investments
are playing a major role in the oil
business. Future trends indicate more
integrated service companies taking
over some of the planning and conducting
some of the research and
development needed for business.
Relationships between oil and service
companies are now closer partnerships
than the previous fee-for-service
operational mode.
The more complex “technological
barrel” demands a high integration of
multidisciplinary knowledge, information
and new ways of doing things
throughout the whole value chain of
“...the history of our industry is
one of this century. The accom-
plishments have been stunning.
And the 21st century? I suggest
it will be one of reinvention.”
the exploration and production
business. I think all of us finally agree
that in order to get the maximum
benefits out of the technologies being
applied, we need to tear down the selfcreated
departmental walls and
integrate all professional expertise into
multidisciplinary teams tailored
according to the task at hand.
The complexity of the world and the
speed with which technology changes
each day demands more integration
between professionals from different
disciplines, just as has been accomplished
among oil and service
companies.
Effective communication, collaborating
with our fellow professionals and
sharing information on a routine basis
all lead to establishing a relationship of
trust that is essential to achieving
success. Multidisciplinary integrated
teams are essential to our being able to
use all available expertise in our
organizations, and thus being able to
add value to our business.
Different technological sources
operate within a new paradigm
focused on doing more with fewer
resources. For this reason, it is not
surprising to see new alliances and
partnerships between companies,
continued on page 4
contractors, consultants, universities,
and other institutions. These alliances
are based on a complementary relationship
in which each part brings its core
competencies to the partnership. This
requires a new mindset that can be
described as having to “cooperate to
compete” in the new marketplace.
A new generation of technology
management based on concurrent
technology futures development is
being created by the circumstances in
this era of new realities in the oil
business. We will be encountering
continued on page 4
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