countries today. This goal will be reached if the energy production is quadrupled during the next hundred years. Generally, to meet those requirements we may forecast some fundamental trends: the energy demand will be met by global energy diversification and the energy portfolio dominated by fossil energy bearing materials will be transformed to extensive utilization of renewable energy sources. Although the relative importance of hydrocarbons will decrease in the coming years the oil and gas production, in absolute sense, will be multiple of the amount recovered during the past 150 years. Unfortunately, the dwindling supplies of conventional hydrocarbons, antiquated power networks and obsolete or even new environmental regulations may threaten the western world into a new energy crisis and the mankind may become again vulnerable to shortage in hydrocarbons, price shock, supply interruptions, and in the worst case, political and military blackmail. These predictions raise some fundamental questions: is really the shortage of hydrocarbons imminent, are we in need of new paradigms in upstream division of the hydrocarbon industry and what strategies in R+D activity we have to follow? As many international forums get to a conclusion, there is no other way out but acceleration of the research and development and more efficient application of the new scientific results for the sake of the better utilization of the available natural resources. The papers presented in this volume give a clear cross-section of the recent scientific advances in mining and oilfield chemistry and the devoted authors, working in different countries, definitely prove the integrity of earth and chemical science through coherent thoughts and converging results. "

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