Abstracts

• 51520 Oil Shocks From the Past and Lessons for the Future First, I review the history of oil shocks or events that caused a significant decrease in the price of oil. Specifically, energy shocks in the mid 1980’s, in the late 1990’s, 2008 - 2009, and the one we still recovering from which began in late 2014. All of these events resulted in an oil price decrease of over 50%. Each one is slightly different from a cause and impact standpoint but there are also similarities. Especially between the middle 1980’s and today. Second, I will discuss the state of the Energy Industry today. Supply and demand, climate, global reserve replacement and investment levels. The short story here is that supply and demand are on a knife edge and will lead to short term volatility in oil price. In this section, I will also discuss climate because of its global impact. Many companies today are working toward producing cleaner & greener energy. Additionally on climate, even using the Paris agreement we will still be using hydrocarbons for energy out beyond 2040. Current investment levels will be discussed as well as reserve replacement, since we are not replacing the reserves we produce by a wide margin and investment levels continue to be low. There are of course big impacts to these factors and I will go deeper into that during my talk. Lastly, I discuss my view of the future. Are we in a normal commodity cycle or are we seeing structural changes in the energy business Is This a Normal Business Cycle, Or Are We Seeing Structural Changes to the Energy Business? There are things to consider that may lead some people to believe that we are actually seeing structural change. I will discuss four factors as to why structural change may indeed be happening right now. Additionally, I will talk about demand forecasts, under investment & its consequences and with a potential supply challenge going forward. Oil Shocks From the Past and Lessons for the Future
  Oil Shocks From the Past and Lessons for the Future
• 51521 The Future of Energy Exploration Today things look bleak. Oil discoveries are at a 70 year low. Few companies are aggressively exploring for new resources, layoffs continue, some bankruptcies have occurred and commodity prices continue to be volatile causing companies spend more time cutting investments than growing or even restoring their resource base. Is this current snapshot of our industry a view into the future? I would say no. We have experienced elements of the current downturn before. Many people point to the mid-1980’s when increasing market share was the goal of one of the world’s largest and lowest cost producers. A drop in oil price, layoffs, deferral of investment all followed. The same is true today and the situation cannot last. Supply and demand will come into balance. Governments and companies will need to renew new investment to maintain production and replace what has been produced. Recent climate agreements will not impact this, as any realistic future scenario clearly shows a large contribution of oil and gas to the energy mix well past 2040. When discussing the future of energy exploration, many past prognosticators have chosen to discuss plays or regions where activity will increase. My focus will not be on geographical areas or individual plays. Rather, I would like to talk about key factors that impact investment and people. GDP growth, field decline, OPEC behavior and US oil production will all impact company and government actions on spending and encouraging exploration. We will need to see these factors behaving in a predictable manner to encourage companies and governments to promote and increase spending on exploration. A large part of the future of energy exploration is also centered around people. Specifically, the teams of explorers that dedicate their careers to the creative and innovative application of science to find new oil and gas globally, often in the face of adversity. The need to master new technology, to interrogate data for increasingly subtle plays, to deal with governmental requirements and to navigate internal company hurdles all pose new challenges to the new generation of explorers. In my view explorers over many decades have risen above many challenges and continued to find new oil and gas deposits. Even at the low point of the current downturn, we can still point to interesting and valuable discoveries being made. Not as much nor as many as we would like/need but the point is that the exploration spirit still thrives and will do so in the future. We will find more oil and gas to fuel the energy needs of the world. The discoveries we will make will at times surprise us. However, what will never surprise anyone is the hard work, dedication, intelligence and ingenuity exhibited by explorers all over the world. We are and will always be a humble yet proud group of scientists that can and will find more oil and gas in significant quantities. The Future of Energy Exploration
  The Future of Energy Exploration