Sometimes the greatest gifts come wrapped not in pretty paper but in a vanilla fortune cookie. As I read Confucius’s wise words regarding the past and future, scattered observations made during recent trips to Aberdeen, Scotland, and Anchorage, Alaska, collided head-on with facts and figures regarding global frontier exploration trends.

What do the North Sea and Alaska’s Cook Inlet have in common? Other than being located in picturesque and less-than-warm climes, both contain basins that are getting a little long in the tooth in terms of hydrocarbon production. I witnessed firsthand the importance of the petroleum industry to both communities and heard in the locals’ voices their concern for their futures. News of grand discoveries in locales far away was greeted with a bit of indifference, a bit of “so what – how does that help me here?” coolness that could send shivers down spines. Their concerns are real. While the Cook Inlet in comparison to the North Sea is quite small, the importance of the gas that comes from its fields is great in size to the many residing in southwestern Alaska. The North Sea’s oil and gas is significant to not one but many countries.

As we approach 2014, some 45 years after the first modern-for-their-time wells were drilled in the North Sea and Cook Inlet, what lessons from their collective drilling and production pasts can be applied to the field developments of today? When the unconventional Eagle Ford soars a little lower or the offshore Jubilee is a little less jubilant, how will the industry apply its collective knowledge to the development of fields that have yet to be discovered?

Frontier exploration is a great and wondrous enterprise. It discovers the big challenges that keep the drilling and production sides of the fence on their collective toes as scientists and engineers invent and deploy the technology necessary to capitalize on exploration’s big finds. If the technology isn’t available or in a place where it needs to be to be successful, then the beautiful datasets full of promising riches sit on the virtual shelf waiting. It’s a brutal cycle.

A common theme that I have heard over and over in the last year is the importance of collaboration between competing companies to the long-term success of a specific project. It is worth noting that the same can be said for the different departments working internally for an E&P company. As US President Ronald Reagan once said while standing in Berlin, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” and come down it did. In the years since, Germany has experienced significant growth.

The solutions to the future’s big challenges, like access to resources and technology, are waiting to be found. We may just need to knock down a few departmental silo walls to get to them.

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