Investors
America must have an energy policy that plans for the future, but meets the needs of today.
Nearly 150 years after the birth of the U.S. oil and gas industry, resources remaining in the ground are still double those produced.Yet recovering these domestic resources will pose challenges requiring innovative thinking andadvanced technologies, with increased attention to environmental protection.
Major contributions to future domestic supplies must come from new frontiers in such geologically challenging and operationally complex settings as the Alaska North Slope, deep formations, deep-water offshore, and lower permeability formations in the Rocky Mountain States. Today’s producers are applying a host of new technologies to minimize the environmental impact of oil and natural gas operations in these frontier regions.
New Life for Old Fields
As in frontier areas, large amounts of domestic resources remain in discovered fields.These resources have been left behind because they are currently not economical to recover.
With their marginal profitability, many fields are in danger of being abandoned, cutting off access to their valuable resources for future generations. However, even in the most mature U.S. basins, industry is breathing new life into older fields once thought on the verge of abandonment, increasing reserves by applying new technologies and concepts.
A new century of opportunities and challenges:
Many envision the eventual transformation of our nation’s energy economy from one based largely on combustion of fossil fuels to one based on alternative sources of energy.
In the coming decades, our nation’s energy security will continue to depend on sufficient supplies of oil and natural gas to support U.S. and global economic growth.
Meeting energy demands will require ongoing innovation, as oil and natural gas fields become ever-more challenging—geologically, operationally, environmentally, socio-economically, and politically.