The Technical Program Committee is inviting papers or posters to be presented at the conference. The theme for the conference is "Meeting Needs - Leading Change ".

The theme was selected by the Committee to represent two key aspects of the responsibilities as engineering/technical professionals. From a simple analytical study of petroleum compounds to the management of the largest offshore installation, the industry contributes to the satisfaction of society 's need for petroleum products.

In addition to meeting the needs of society, the industry is empowered to lead the technological changes and set high health, safety and environmental standards and targets that will allow the continued production of hydrocarbons in an increasingly demanding future world.

Ensuring an exciting and interesting program of events for the 2004 APOGCE, the Technical Committee has scheduled renowned speakers, a large number of technical paper sessions, two panel discussion sessions, a special invited guest session and poster displays.

To assist in submitting a paper, a list of technical interest areas has been provided, which can be provided by Kevin.Lay@BHPBilliton.com. Within this list the SPE has suggested two special areas of interest it believes are important components of our proposed theme -gas supply (meeting needs) and deepwater developments (leading change).

These two special technical interest areas also conveniently describe society 's evolution from oil to gas and the push towards ever more technically challenging frontier areas in our search for hydrocarbons.

The abstract is due prior to the 2 February 2004 deadline and should be delivered to Kevin.Lay@BHPBilliton.com