When a leading CEO admits the upstream business got caught with its pants down, you know he’s sincere.

Statoil’s Eldar Sætre is a veteran—he was 10 years old when Norway spudded its first well—so he’s seen downturns before. Speaking at the Offshore Northern Seas (ONS) event in Stavanger, he spoke of the industry facing not only new realities but also opportunities.

Sætre recalled at ONS 2014 the price was close to $100/bbl. “But the low oil price has exposed us all,” he admitted. The industry needs a culture where it allows improvement, irrespective of where it is in the commodity cycle, Sætre said. It must continue changing how it works and must collaborate.

His clarion call was echoed by Saudi Aramco’s senior vice president for Upstream, Mohammed Al-Qahtani, who said a downturn “is a prime time to look at project fundamentals through a lens. Reducing costs is a must. But it’s a mistake to cut our ability to innovate.”

The company wants to increase its reservoir recovery rates to 70%, which would lead to an estimated 900 Bboe resource base increase. It has been carrying out R&D for several years on technologies such as nano-scale reservoir robots, dubbed “resbots,” to dramatically improve its reservoir management capability. “We have barely scratched the surface of technology development,” he said.

Scott Sheffield, CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources, highlighted how in the U.S. Permian Basin the company has innovated by using wind power to supply electricity. Pioneer’s breakeven in the Permian is $25/bbl, he said. By using wind to provide its electricity in Texas, the opex figure for those wells is just $2/bbl. It’s innovative, not ironic, that Texas, the largest U.S. oil producer at 3 MMbbl/d, is also the country’s second largest user of wind and solar power.

E&P’s cover feature this month also highlights the other basic necessity—to keep finding hydrocarbons. Statoil’s exploration chief, Tim Dodson, said at ONS, “If we stand still, the world will just not have enough oil and gas to meet demand. We need to explore to fill the gap. The industry has depleted its stock of fields, so new discoveries need to be made. In any province the biggest discoveries are usually made fairly early in their exploration. So opening up new areas like the Barents Sea is a must. We need to test big structures.”

Luca Bertelli, Eni’s chief exploration officer, pointed out without hesitation to delegates that its giant Zohr gas field in the Mediterranean will go from 849 Bcm (30 Tcf) discovery to first phase production in just 28 months. The block was only awarded to Eni the year before Zohr was drilled.

The industry is clearly transitioning how it works. If it is to survive and prosper, it will be, as Sir Isaac Newton said, “by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Contact the author, Mark Thomas, at mthomas@hartenergy.com.

Read this month's cover story: Tipping The Exploration Balance

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