This is my sixth JPT column as 2025 SPE President. Hopefully, it will be the last excessively long one. So far, I have tried—as extensively and neutrally as possible—to share my perspectives on the realities (and most often, the challenges) that we face in SPE: energy transition, finances, governance, quality, and now membership.
Our “SPE reality” is both complex and multidimensional, with these dimensions being interconnected and not to be addressed separately. The most obvious connections are SPE’s financial constraints and the costs that occur when solving individual problems, particularly when trying to do so in isolation. As an organization, SPE needs to balance its resources and actions—and frankly, we need additional sources of revenue to address all these challenges in parallel.
However, these are not the only complexities. SPE also faces many issues on which our membership holds diverse and potentially conflicting opinions (e.g., energy transition, governance, and publication quality). We are a point where even stating an issue may be considered provocative (e.g., the “SPE” name, Society of Petroleum Engineers).
Even attempting to propose a neutral position on topics outside our mission may not be acceptable to the most opinionated individuals on both sides of a particular issue. In such circumstances, it is very tempting to put some matters in the ‘much-too-difficult’ bin, but in reality, putting our heads in the sand is not an option. This is generally true (i.e., our industry is too critical, we cannot defer/deflect difficult issues), but especially relevant now, as converging challenges and competing risks affect our industry.
With those conditions in mind, let me return to this month’s focus: the evolution of SPE membership.
Recent Challenges Related to the 2015 Downturn and the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic
SPE’s membership statistics are summarized in Table 1.
In the recent past, between 2015 and 2021, SPE lost one-third of its professional members (dropping from 99,000 to 66,000). Professional membership has somewhat stabilized now.
In addition, we lost 14% of our student membership. Fortunately, SPE student membership has grown significantly since 2021, approaching 2015 numbers.
The statistics in Table 1 are not great, but neither are these numbers particularly alarming. In aggregate, our SPE membership is down, but our current membership is above the 2008 level and stable. Our main concern at present is the demographics of this membership, especially the low number of young professional (YP) members. This scenario can (and will) lead to serious issues in the decades to come, much like the demographic gap we experienced following the 1985 downturn.
I could focus solely on the YP problem—this would shorten this column, to the delight of the reader and our JPT publication staff. Instead, I will provide some historical context for our membership statistics. What we face today is not the first time, although it may be, statistically, the worst of times.
A large proportion of the “downturn” events occurred during my career, and I will take the risk of adding my personal perspectives. You are welcome to skip these if you wish to stick to membership statistics, but I will make several attempts at entertaining you with my own experiences and perspectives.
