Gas Race: Technology Mitigates Risk in Anadarko’s Western Canadian Gas Exploration Campaign
Mark Hand is senior editor of Public Utilities Fortnightly.
Beware of the eternal doomsayer who persists in warning we're going to run out of oil or gas sometime in our children or grandchildren's lifetimes. That's the advice from members of the exploration and production community who've seen firsthand the power of technology in finding and producing reserves.
"I think that historically, whenever people look that far ahead, they always take kind of a pessimistic view of the resource they're working on, always thinking there's going to be something else out there to take over," says Robert Daniels, president of Calgary-based Anadarko Canada, one of the top independent producers operating in Canada. "I know back in the 30s, back in the 50s, back in the 70s, we were going to run out of gas, we were going to run out of oil, we've got a 20-year life and we're done. And here we are in 2002, there's still plenty of it out there."
Some producers are more active than others in using new technology to explore in undeveloped areas. Anadarko Petroleum, the parent company of Anadarko Canada, has been at the forefront of the technology charge in the United States since the early 1990s with its use of in-house 3-D seismic survey workstations. With its recent acquisitions in Canada, Anadarko is applying this knowledge and experience in some of the lesser-developed areas of Alberta and British Columbia.