Frontiers Issue 25: August 2009

Managing Editor Terry Knott welcomes readers to this issue of Frontiers, the BP magazine of technology and innovation

Few offshore projects can lay claim to have been the driving force for advancing industry technology on all fronts. But such is the nature of BP's pioneering Thunder Horse development in the Gulf of Mexico - now the world's most productive deepwater field - that the project can justifiably do so. In this issue of Frontiers we have a special feature on the Thunder Horse development, charting not only its successes but also the unexpected challenges that occurred during its decade-long journey from discovery to production, as the project laid the foundations for the next generation of deepwater developments.

Moving from the mega-project scale to the molecular level, we also report on a BP breakthrough in the world of waterflooding, revealing the company's new proprietary technique for coaxing more oil from reservoirs.

High-tech visualisation is a theme occurring in two articles - one describing BP's well planning toolkit for helping to optimise well designs, the other describing use of the simulated virtual world to prepare people to carry out their tasks in the real world.

And in the sphere of analytical science, we learn how BP's investigational analysts developed a sophisticated technique to track down potential contaminants in aviation fuel.

We hope you enjoy Frontiers, from the depths of the ocean to the depths of molecular science.

Terry Knott
Managing Editor, Frontiers

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Frontiers issue 25 opening section (pdf, 1290KB)