It was at Oil Creek, near the town of Titusville in Pennsylvania in 1859, where legend has it that Colonel Drake found his first oil well simply by throwing his hat in the air and drilling where it landed. Oil gushed out. Yet in those days, oil seeped out naturally from just under the surface and that first well was a mere 23 metres deep. The black-gold rush sounded the death knell for the supremacy of coal and oil production was to reach levels that Colonel Drake could never have imagined in his wildest dreams! Particularly as over the last century and a half, the oil industry has been constantly pushing back the technological frontiers. Yet despite all this progress, the environment is uncertain: discoveries are becoming rarer with remaining deposits harder to access, as world consumption continues to grow.
Oil companies and producing countries are very much aware of the need to keep meeting world demand.

For international companies, this means
developing new technologies to get the

utmost from existing reserves and exploit new resources such as extra-heavy crude and deep-offshore deposits.

Past technological advances show that the industry has always been able to rise to the challenge. Just one example of this is Total’s pioneering development of deep-offshore resources. The Group’s wealth of experience drives its energy supply mission and underpins its investment in cutting-edge technologies. Technologies to extend the life of fields already in production, to improve oil recovery rates, to develop “frontier” oil and gas resources more efficiently to increase our resources through optimised reserve management, and to tap the world’s abundant unconventional energy resources. All this in an environment made all the more uncertain by persistently unpredictable oil prices. After two years of spiralling prices, the downward trend that started in the summer of 2006 gathered pace the following autumn. But how long will it last? Industry observers

are reluctant to say…

In this issue, Energies invites its readers to discover a new chapter in the oil adventure, as told by Total’s technological and industrial advances. It’s about more than just “frontier” resources.
There are so many avenues and new opportunities still to be explored –new horizons full of the promise that Total and the oil industry still have a bright future ahead of them.

The editorial team

Artist Nicholas Simmons strives in his work to compose an abstract perspective of the real or an engaging interpretation of the unreal. In this landscape, organic textures blend into an image evocative of the power and promise of the Earth’s natural resources. Windswept. Watercolour on backed tissue paper. From the Geology series.
http://www.nicholassimmons.com.