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introduction—Asia/Pacific

Zhijing (Zee) Wang

lgochioco@gxt.com

WangZ@chevrontexaco.com

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

This special section presents varied geophysical applications from five different countries in an economically and culturally diverse region that contains about 23% of the world's population. Socioeconomic conditions have stagnated since 1997. But when the region recovers, rapid growth could extract a toll on the environment. Thus, governments are challenged to provide adequate and affordable energy by diversifying from the traditional energy supply sources to expanding the use of indigenous energy resources. One area where the two problems can be addressed simultaneously is through the greater use of domestic natural gas. Most of the power plants built in the United States since the 1990s were gas-fired; now some Asian countries are employing the same strategy.

The first paper presents a brief historical account of the birth and growth of the Philippine natural gas industry that resulted from the discovery of the offshore Malampaya gas field in 1989. It is a good example of careful upstream and downstream technology planning and execution to lessen the country's heavy reliance on imports. However, the still largely underexplored Philippines continues to face . . . [Full Text of this Article]