World Expro

New areas of exploration are opening up, and with them, new developments in technology. With oil reserves and fossil fuel resources in decline, attention has turned to the extreme north – and primarily the Arctic region, which is the focus of our cover story.

Elsewhere in the issue we hear from industry experts, including Anders Opedal, the chief procurement officer at StatoilHydro, on finding the balance between operator and contractor; J Mike Stice, the president of ConocoPhillips in Qatar who reveals an exclusive insight into the newly developed Water Sustainability Centre at the Qatar Science and Technology Park and Wim de Vries, the programme manager at Well Engineering Research, Shell, who explains how well engineers can drill deeper, increase production levels and extend economic life.

When it comes to hard-to-reach deposits, they don't come much tougher than the Ormen Lange gas field. Our cover story reports on the home to the world's deepest large-bore gas well and how Shell is coping in one of the most inhospitable regions on earth.

The Sakhalin1 oil and gas fields are testament to what can be achieved through multinational cooperation. Russian, European and Japanese companies have worked side by side in a massive design and construction effort; we give the low-down on this highly exciting and successful development off the Russian east coast.

Other highlights within these pages include an exclusive interview with ABOI director Ken Gibbons, Chevron Corporation's John W McDonald outlining some uncomfortable truths about the state of our industry, and a discussion about how best to formulate a universally accepted objective standard for classifying oil and gas reserves.

The oil and gas industry is, perhaps more than most, accustomed to mergers and acquisitions, but few past consolidations have had quite the impact that the Statoil nad Norsk Hydro merger could. Essentially it will create another major global force in the energy market with a highly experienced offshore capability primed to tackle the difficult locations where much of our future oil reserves will probably be located in future.

The merger raises questions about further mergers and acquisitions activity. Is this the start of another raft of market consolidations designed to shore up the future of the industry and mitigate risk? In this edition of World Expro, we find out the answer from Statoil's CEO Helge Lund. And we examine the merger in detail with Hydro president and CEO, Eivind Reiten.

In this edition we focus on increasing efficiency and prolonging the life of existing oil fields. We look at technology being employed by Statoil to improve recovery rates from increasingly complicated reserves. We examine in detail one project involving the revolutionary application of standard technology to install the first commercial seabed processing plant. We also look at the evolution of micro-hole technology and examine the potential uses of this technology to reclaim shallow oil reserves, reduce costs and minimise environmental impact.

Elsewhere we hear from Exxon Mobil and Shell, who enforce the message that technological advance is the most vital aspect of the upstream oil and gas industry. We also take a look at the evolution of the Bake Tiles pipeline and see exactly how BP is achieving its goal of transporting one million barrels of oil per day 1,768km between the Caspian and Mediterranean seas without harming local communities or the environment.

In this edition of World Expro we examine in detail the rising profile of gas and LNG. We also look at the issues concerning Eastern European supply as well as the development of new installations across the developing world.

There is growing concern about the volatile nature of oil prices. In the wake of hurricane Katrina, World Expro looks at what to expect in the long term for oil prices, and how wildly divergent reserve estimations are affecting industry confidence.