Grand Challenges for the Oil and Gas Industry for the Next Decade and Beyond

About a decade ago, the SPE conducted a series of workshops to define the grand challenges in technology and R&D for the following decade. As we consider the grand challenges for the next decade, we face a very different situation— one in which the traditional oil and gas industry faces multiple threats and opportunities that have rapidly emerged, with growing climate and sustainability concerns as well as the rapid penetration of fundamentally new energy technologies.

We have formulated a set of Grand Challenges for the next decade, leveraging an SPE workshop held in Austin, TX in January 2023. This workshop focused on defining Grand Challenges that would be impactful for society and our industry, have a significant R&D / technology component, and are aligned with the skills and experience of the SPE membership.

We arrived at a list of five Grand Challenges: Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage, Geothermal, Net-Zero Operations, Improved Recovery from Tight / Shale Resources, and Digital Transformation. In addition, we identified a sixth “bonus” challenge— Education and Advocacy, since we believe that more effective engagement with thought leaders outside our industry will be key to advancing and deploying new technologies in these areas. All content contained within this webinar is copyrighted by Jeffrey R. Bailey, Scyller J. Borglum, Thomas C. Halsey and Kishore K. Mohanty and its use and/or reproduction outside the portal requires express permission from Jeffrey R. Bailey, Scyller J. Borglum, Thomas C. Halsey and Kishore K. Mohanty.

SPE Webinars are FREE to members courtesy of the