The following is adapted and excerpted from Hans Landsberg's foreword to Trends in the Soviet Oil and Gas Industry, by Robert W. Campbell.
When Resources for the Future published Robert Campbell's The Economies of Soviet Oil and Gas in 1968, a foreword, dated December 1967, pointed to the widespread interest in Soviet oil as based on "the competitive threat perceived in the expansion of exports from that country."
Things have changed a good deal since. Far from being considered a competitive threat, the Soviet Union has come to be looked upon as a most desirable source of supplementary supplies, both of oil and gas, and not just for Western Europe but for Japan and possibly the United States. As elsewhere in the world, the question now in the United States is not how to cope with competing supplies but how long these supplies are going to last and who will have a chance of obtaining them.
One of the more fascinating aspects of this new review of the subject is the extent to which it reveals Soviet oil and gas industry problems to have much in common with those encountered in the United States. Declining well productivity, lagging finding rates, shifts to more costly deposits, refinery mix—these and other problems will strike a familiar note to observers of the U.S. scene. Oil and gas problems seem not to be respecters of differences in social and political systems. As one contemplates the change in scenery between 1968 and 1975, the cutoff date for Campbell's new data, one must wonder what issues may arise by the end of this decade, and whether they will call for yet another revisit!
A version of this article appeared in print in the April 1977 issue of Resources magazine.
