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The Leading Edge; January 2001; v. 20; no. 1; p. 92-99; DOI: 10.1190/1.1438890
© 2001 Society of Exploration Geophysicists
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E&P technology development in times of uncertain and weak economy

Ken Larner

Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado, U.S.

Corresponding author: K. Larner, klarner@dix.mines.edu

Editor's note: These remarks were presented by Ken Larner at the 1999 SEG Annual Meeting Technology Forum, Houston, Texas, U.S., 4 November 1999. The remarks also are available online at www.seg.org/publications/webonly.

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

The emphasis in this talk is on R&D, which, although not synonymous with E&P technology development, is the essential enabler for future technology. My comments for this forum will be in the form of questions, with personal opinions—but no answers—attached. Perhaps they will inspire discussion among, and even some answers from, today's panelists and members of the audience. The ten questions here might seem afield from the optimistic plans for approaches to R&D that we've heard from the oil-company representatives today, but I cannot see how large R&D plans for the future can be credibly pursued without serious considerations of such questions. Here are the questions.

  1. What do "times of uncertainty" and "soft economy" mean?
  2. What's all the fuss? Hasn't the technology in our field leapt forward at a remarkable pace during this past difficult decade?
  3. Is exploration technology already good enough? Do we need any more?
  4. Can it all be done with outsourcing and leveraging of other technologies?
  5. When are "strategic alliances" little more than "tactical ones?"
  6. Is geophysics just a commodity?
  7. Worse, are geophysicists just a commodity? Have knowledge and expertise become outmoded assets?
  8. Might the demise of serious R&D be a self-fulfilling prophecy?
  9. What does industry expect of academia?
  10. Will universities and industry attract the best and the brightest? Does it matter?

Before commenting on them, I'd like to show a slide (Figure 1).


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  		Figure 1. R&D as percent of net sales.

 
This slide, taken from a paper on the Web by Robert Margolis and Dan Kammen, compares R&D expenditures as percentage of sales for selected business sectors in the U.S. in 1995. If you look hard, you'll find R&D support for energy way down there on the far right. If you can't see it in the back of the audience, I'm having trouble seeing it at . . . [Full Text of this Article]






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