A look forward
And so we come to the end of our seven months of coverage of the 100th anniversary of Gulf Publishing Company and World Oil. Like a set of bookends, Bob Scott’s guest column led this final 20-page section with a look back at some of the more entertaining aspects of the company during his tenure, and this page now attempts to wrap things up and look toward the future.
The future for GPC/World Oil. Mind you, the first 40% of my time at the company has coincided with the last third of Bob’s tenure. When I first began working at GPC and World Oil, the editors were still banging out content on electric typewriters and hand-carrying manuscripts downstairs to the Production Department. But since then, in a remarkable revolution, we’ve seen editors and production staff acclimate to using PCs and Apple computers, rather than paper, ink, X-Acto knives, etc.
Equally revolutionary has been the Internet’s impact. Suddenly, publishers, in addition to hard-copy magazines, could create websites, upload news and insert electronic advertising. The ability to put additional content online seems almost limitless.
So, in the future, you can expect us to continue to expand our electronic/online capabilities, as we look for additional ways to deliver timely, useful, technical information and data. There will come a day, when the vast majority of the magazine’s copies are delivered electronically (already, about a third are sent this way), but not for a while yet.
Bob has described how World Oil’s editorial staff conducted field visits to disparate parts of the globe during the 1960s through the 1990s. Yet, as early as 1929, Associate Editor Roy E. Leigh of World Oil predecessor The Oil Weekly, embarked on a two-year project to conduct a tour of South American oil fields, plus “a survey of the oil fields of the Old World, covering producing areas in Europe, Asia, Africa, Sumatra, Java, Borneo and Ceram,” and concluding in Japan.
This was quite a feat, as there was no practical way of flying commercially across the Atlantic (or Pacific), even via Newfoundland, for another 10 years. So, Leigh’s travels were accomplished by “employing every means of transportation, from the burro to the airplane.” And frequently, his forward travel arrangements had to be made ad hoc, while already on the road. Leigh began his South American travels in early 1929 and sent back regular dispatches to The Oil Weekly. His last leg concluded on Jan. 12, 1931, when he returned to Houston from Yokohama, Japan.
The rich history of World Oil editors conducting field visits has continued beyond Bob’s tenure. In the future, you can be assured that staff field visits will continue, particularly after we get through the current market downturn.
Another staple of World Oil’s coverage has been its twice-yearly forecasting and review of worldwide drilling and production data, which, given frequent bureaucratic impediments, has been remarkably accurate for most of its 90 years. You can look forward to us continuing this tradition, and we are working on ways to enhance this reporting and expand the data coverage.
The future for the industry. When one looks back at the last 100 years of technical achievement, it becomes a difficult task to imagine what might be tackled in the next 10 years or so.
Nevertheless, it is possible to see that technology efforts are headed toward four main areas. First, we’re going to see progress made in automating oil field functions of all kinds, from drilling through completions to production. Three driving factors are reducing headcount, improving efficiencies, and cutting down on safety risks. Second, we will see predictive analytics creeping into everything from reservoir modeling to drilling performance and production schemes. This effort has gained momentum, in light of financial effects suffered by operators during the market downturn.
Third, we’re going to see operators slowly begin to use Big Data of all kinds, as they grasp how to organize all the data that they collect in operations now. Already, a few service firms and operators are looking at cooperating on this topic. Finally, we will see efforts made to adapt artificial intelligence to E&P functions.
On a geographic level, we can expect the Middle East to remain a center of attention, particularly since ongoing political instability can, so easily, affect production and development levels. In Africa, we will see whether some regimes are able to maintain their recently achieved oil and gas output rates. China is an evolving story that will bear watching, as it continues to dominate Far Eastern E&P activity.
South America could become an oil-and-gas heavyweight, but the matter of Venezuela’s tottering industry must be resolved. There also are concerns whether Canada can achieve the full potential of its oil sands resources. How these issues are resolved will determine whether North America and South America can combine into a self-sufficient, Western Hemisphere energy coalition. In the longer term, deepwater projects and the Arctic will become increasingly important. Percolating underneath will be the continual fight between hydrocarbon production proponents, and climate change/anti-oil-and-gas fanatics.
In regard to the immediate, global market downturn, some slight improvement may be in the offing for the latter quarter of this year, followed by some gradual recovery of oil and gas prices and activity levels during 2017, particularly in the U.S. and Canada. What happens beyond next year is less certain. We believe that operators have entered a new era of cautious spending, and very deliberate planning, that likely will last for most of the next 10 years.
One thing that won’t change, but will be reinforced, is our permanent, long-standing commitment to quality coverage of technical progress and management issues. 
