Currently, there are comments circulating on social media concerning SPE costs, value, and integrity. I would like to address these questions and shed some light on how SPE operates and offers the best for its members. I would like to start with clarifying SPE's organizational structure and decision-making processes. SPE Governance The SPE Board of Directors is the governing and policy-making body of SPE. The 20 members of the Board care deeply about SPE and its members and volunteer their time to make it a society based on ethics and integrity.

Gray Alton is the vice president of Project Development at Terrapin Geothermics (Terrapin). He leads the company's geographical expansion across Canada and internationally. With 17 years of construction and project development experience, Alton scouts project opportunities and brings together all stakeholders required to conceptualize, develop, and finance waste heat and geothermal power projects.

What is the energy transition, and why should you care? As society is actively making goals to shift away from carbon-intensive processes--such as combusting coal and gas for power and heat-use production--a need for more clean and reliable power and heating/cooling production is emerging. Wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources can generate emission-free power for our grid, but these clean energy resources are intermittent in their supply and therefore cannot be solely relied on for a baseload (constant) supply of energy like coal and gas. Because of this, the industry should focus on utilizing conventional geothermal and industrial waste-heat to provide a baseload resource for reliable emission-free power and heating/cooling projects. Conventional geothermal energy projects rely on drilling multiple miles into the earth (anywhere from 1 to 4 miles) where high-temperature geothermal brine (greater than 70 F) is produced to surface.

The Journal of Petroleum Technology, the Society of Petroleum Engineers' flagship magazine, presents authoritative briefs and features on technology advancements in exploration and production, oil and gas industry issues, and news about SPE and its members.

The Journal of Petroleum Technology, the Society of Petroleum Engineers' flagship magazine, presents authoritative briefs and features on technology advancements in exploration and production, oil and gas industry issues, and news about SPE and its members.

Wellhead and downhole safety valves (DHSVs) are considered health, safety, and environment (HSE) critical well equipment in oil fields around the world. Ensuring 100% integrity of this critical equipment has always been a challenge because of aging equipment and a lack of comprehensive international standard guidelines. A comprehensive methodology, called the 100% Integrity Assurance approach, therefore, was implemented by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company for this equipment to ensure sustainability and prevent HSE incidents throughout the well life cycle. The methodology has contributed significantly to life extension of the aging equipment by reducing failure rates. The 100% Integrity Assurance approach for HSE-critical well equipment is a broad-spectrum, continuous process involving collaboration among multiple disciplines of the organization, such as the well integrity, field development, field production, and maintenance teams.

The debate over whether to again allow briny, sometimes radioactive, waste water pumped from conventional oil and gas wells to be spread on Pennsylvania's dirt roads has become as salty and charged as the material itself. For more than a half-century, the water used to pump oil and gas from the ground has been a savior for rural road managers, with hundreds of millions of gallons spread for free on thousands of miles of back roads to suppress dust in summer and prevent icing in the winter. A legal challenge led the state to ban the practice in 2018. But now environmentalists are squaring off with drillers and some legislators as the state determines whether it should resume. In the meantime, most of the drilling wastewater is being stored and reused in conventional oil and gas wells or taken to wastewater treatment plants.

The sheer expanse of the deep sea and the technological challenges of working in an extreme environment make these depths difficult to access and study. Scientists know more about the surface of the moon than the deep seafloor. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) is leveraging advancements in robotic technologies to address this disparity. An autonomous robotic rover, Benthic Rover II, has provided new insight into life on the abyssal seafloor, 4,000 m beneath the surface of the ocean. A study published in Science Robotics details the development and proven long-term operation of this rover.

The Journal of Petroleum Technology, the Society of Petroleum Engineers' flagship magazine, presents authoritative briefs and features on technology advancements in exploration and production, oil and gas industry issues, and news about SPE and its members.

To meet ambitious net zero targets, existing and new technologies will need to be deployed at a pace and scale far beyond anything previously imagined or experienced. This creates enormous challenges for supply chains that do not currently exist at scale--or exist at all.