They say that the future is what you make of it. Well, if that's the case, the next few decades in the upstream oil and gas sector are going to be mind-blowing.
There is little doubt that some of business' great technological brains work in the E&P sector, and some of the concepts and visions being considered and worked on by these individuals are truly breathtaking.
This issue of Hart's E&P is of course the first of the new millennium (you hadn't heard?), and even though it is of course just another year, it has served one tangible purpose: it has forced people of all disciplines to consider the future, and the role that they want to play in it. Many within the oil sector have been no doubt giving plenty of thought to the future of oil itself. How long HAVE we got left? When WILL it run out? What comes NEXT?
Much of this issue therefore is devoted to trying to give guidance to our readers as to what indeed might be looming on the horizon. Not only in terms of the subject everyone talks about these days - oil prices. But vital pointers as to the future direction of the E&P business - future energy sources, forecast expenditures, planned future activities, technological innovations in the pipeline, and on into a future beyond oil.
Who can fail to get motivated by the fact that it is forecast that around US $240 billion will be spent on E&P activities between now and 2010? Some of that money will go toward making exciting concepts fly, such as riserless drilling, micro subsea rigs, laser drilling, molecular computers and so on.
Some of these are virtually science fiction - but people working on them right now believe they will happen, and sooner than we think.
This must of course always be considered against the inescapable home truth that these wonderful technologies may cease to be any use whatsoever once oil runs out. But technology has a great way of finding new applications for its use.
Because another home truth is that we must find another source of energy to replace oil at some point, and technology will play the crucial role in enabling that to happen. That time may occur before the oil in the ground actually runs out.
After all, the Stone Age didn't end because they ran out of stone...