What a difference a decade can make. Li ten short years, a sea change has taken place in the oil and gas industry, with the North American shale revolution demonstrating that huge tight rock resources previously considered off-limits can be commercially viable, and with technological advances rapidly expanding the deepwater frontier. The industry's entrenched assumption of resource scarcity — particularly for oil — has given way to a sense of optimism about future supplies that was vividly in evidence among industry leaders speaking at last week's IHS CERA Week conference in Houston. But those executives displayed an equal recognition of the tremendous challenges ahead if that optimism is to be justified.' The opportunities are plentiful, but they are also complex and difficult," BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley told delegates. "In business, we often talk of challenges and opportunities, [but] what we face today is a series of challenging opportunities." Those opportunities involve efficiently and profitably commercializing oil and gas produced in deeper waters, oil sands, shale, harsh environments such as the Arctic and high pressure, high temperature reservoirs.
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