The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[OakesCS]

Natco no longer exists and the company I work for is >10x larger than Cameron.

As for:"There just isn't much room for incremental value added to further R&D in the chemistry of thermal oil recovery..."

I'm sure people once had similar thoughts about geomechanics and natural gas production.

In addition, people don't come to my company and me because they have problems that are "managed well". Quite the converse.

And it's funny that u cited Larry Lake. If u go to his UTexas website and look at his recent publications, you'll note that he's been working on the sorts of problems I outlined. Obviously, he doesn't think the problems are all managed sufficiently.