Tapping New Opportunities

For decades, concerns have ebbed and flowed about the world’s oil reserves and how long they would last. Even in recent years, various industry estimates have indicated that we may run low on oil in as few as 50 years.

Emerson sees it differently. With multiple technology advances that help us to tap new and existing resources safely, efficiently and effectively, we see an oil supply that could last another 100 years or more.

This more optimistic outlook is fueled by technology in three key areas:

• With expanded reservoir modeling and other software capabilities, producers are able to extract more from existing oil and gas reserves, and tap into new reserves that were previously impossible to extract from.
• Newer technology enables us to extract oil from shale, which was previously impractical.
• Advances in renewable energy help us to reduce the strain on our oil reserves.

Emerson is helping producers in each of these areas. As the major independent Exploration & Production (E&P) software company in the world, our technology plays a key role in helping producers to identify ways to cost-effectively extract more oil from reserves where they already have facilities. The software also facilitates planning for new oil reserves in areas like the frigid arctic regions of Alaska or remote offshore locations. Our E&P software interprets data to provide detailed mapping of new or existing assets, helping producers to maximize efficiency in planning, get the most from existing facilities and reserves, and to avoid unproductive exploratory drilling.

Our technology also helps producers to maximize oil extraction from shale, a process that has expanded in recent years to enable us to tap vast new oil reserves that were previously impractical or impossible to utilize.

And Emerson is helping to expand the effectiveness of renewable energy sources like wind and solar, providing technology that enables highly efficient control of renewable energy generation operations, as well as solutions that optimize transitions from renewable to traditional fuel sources to help ensure that electricity is always flowing for the homes and businesses that depend on it.

With continual advances in each of these areas, we see a long lifespan for the world’s oil reserves, a time frame that is likely to continue to expand as we continue to pursue innovation across the energy industry.