I was at a non-oilfield soiree the other night and started a casual chat with a friendly fellow in the legal business. Our business fascinated him. I have always found that to be the case among the non-tree-hugging group. But his misconceptions of our industry were manifold and glaring. We discussed other industries in a manner that indicated that his understanding of them was far superior to his understanding of our industry.

It gradually dawned on me that his lack of knowledge and abundance of misconceptions had little to do with our dismal failure to promote a positive image of our industry but, rather, was caused by our invisibility.

I venture that anyone over the age of 15 has a decent knowledge of the automobile construction industry - they must understand the basic premises of automobile engineering to operate a vehicle. It's touted in promotional literature and on the sales floor.

The same holds true for the agricultural industry. No one I know assumes (or at least admits that they assume) that the potatoes and aubergines in the produce section were placed there by divine intervention. They know - through folk lore, by passing numerous farms by the roadside, by passing trucks delivering produce to markets - that agricultural produce is planted, raised, harvested and transported to market. Many have probably had small vegetable gardens and actually participated in the process.

But take a more complex industry - say steel making. While not familiar with specific processes and metallurgy it would be hard to find someone who did not have a knowledge of the basics of refining ores and melting base metals to make steel. That much is taught in basic chemistry. Many will also have passed a steel mill at some point in their lives.

Here is our problem. The basics of hydrocarbon formation and entrapment are not taught in public schools and may not be intuited from other chemical, mechanical and geological process that most understand. Thus, the rudimentary principles of the industry are invisible.

More importantly, our factories and our products are seldom seen by those outside the industry. How many people do you know outside the industry that have seen or, less likely, visited a drilling site? Most are remote and many offshore where they remain invisible to the vast majority of the public. The same goes for a production facility. How many of your non-oily friends do you think have actually seen a separator much less a complete production train? There aren't many people traveling the wilds of deep West Texas nor the surfaces of waters in offshore production areas.

Come to think of it, how many people do you reckon have ever seen our product - crude, condensates, natural gas liquids and natural gas? Or a pumping unit, coiled tubing unit, seismic spread or any other of the thousands of things that comprise our every day working lives. I will wager you that the number is less - far less - than have seen the insides of the military's most advanced technology. The US Navy even takes family members on limited cruises.

There is no lesson here. Well, maybe one. Outwith the environmental extremists, we should probably be a lot more tolerant than we are. Most of the people we talk to have never had a second's interaction with our industry. It is highly unlikely that anyone in their family has ever worked in the upstream industry, or known anyone who has. Unlike automobile making, farming and steel making, it is largely unknown. It is not intuitive. It is, in fact, invisible.

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