This report, prepared by The Petroleum Science and Technology Institute (PSTI), sets out to promote and focus actions in research and technology development (RTD) in petroleum exploration and production (E&P). It synthesises a mass of intelligence on E&P companies' business and technical challenges, together with their likely requirements for RTD towards the year 2000.

The report has been prepared primarily to inform the international RTD community. It is aimed both at scientists and engineers who have a track-record of working with the E&P industry and those with little or no previous contact who may nevertheless have a valuable contribution to make.

It also aims to inform government agencies, at national and European Union level, which support strategic and applied research, technology development and demonstration (RTD&D) from public funds.

This report will be of value to innovative technology delivery companies by providing a new and wider perspective on future opportunities for the delivery of innovative products or services.

Finally, it provides an opportunity for E&P companies to compare and contrast in-house views with those of the wider industry.

1.1 Structure of the Report

Following a statement on technical scope (Section 2), the main business factors which typically influence an E&P company's RTD investment decisions are summarised (Section 3).

There is increasingly strong evidence that the industry is looking to RTD investments to improve profitability: the aim is to generate opportunities to win new assets of commercial value and to remove barriers to the optimisation of present assets. In the best run companies this will involve both immediate and longer term (10 years) RTD investments. In Section 4 the nature of the asset challenges is described.

A summary of RTD requirements is provided in Section 5, including those aimed at significant cost reduction or performance enhancement through progressive, incremental technical improvements, and those which may enable step changes in capability.

Public sector support for RTD plays an important role. In Section 6 the focus of E&P related actions in the European Union's Fourth Framework Programme (European Commission, 1994) and the relevant findings of the UK Government's Technology Foresight Programme (Office of Science and Technology, 1995 a, b, c) are set out for comparison with the findings of this report.

Finally there is a discussion in Section 7 of ways to improve further the efficiency of industry, namely RTD community interaction.

1.2 Sources of Information

Information on RTD requirements in this report comes both from PSTI's direct contact with its Member organisations (E&P companies, technology delivery companies both large and small, and government bodies: see list of PSTI's Members) and from routine scanning of the scientific and technical literature. The information has not been gathered or analysed in a statistically rigorous manner and therefore cannot by itself provide quantitative weightings in terms of importance. Rather the report offers PSTI's own value judgements based on a close working knowledge of the industry.