The Japanese Association for Petroleum Technology(JAPT)) was established in 1933 by the interested scientists and engineers in Japanese oil industry, for the purpose of improving the technology in oil and gas exploration and development and promoting mutual friendship among members. Since then, the association has been expanded and supported by many geologists, geophysicists, drilling, production, reservoir and related engineers in the academies, the research institutes and the upstream oil industries in Japan, and a total number of the JAPT members has become more than 1700 in these days.

 The recent high oil price might mitigate the economical problems to develop the small to medium size oil fields and to explore the fields of complex geology with hard to access, the deep water fields etc., and it might be a good opportunity for oil companies to accelerate the activity of exploration and development. Moreover, its relatively low price might cause the increase of the demand of the natural gas, and the advance of the transportation technology, such as gas pipeline, LNG etc., might accelerate the exploration and development of the natural gas resources. The world wide oil companies and the national oil companies are in keen competition to acquire the domestic and foreign oil and gas resources.

 The improvement of the technology based on the brush up of the essential techniques in the several technological fields in exploration and development may be necessary to win the race of the resource acquisition. The recent advance of the computer technology both on hardware and software might enhance the specialization in technology and the technological products and results are really diversified, and the products of a technological field could often be applicable to another field.

 Nowadays the engineer should be interested in various kind of technology and should not confine himself to his specialized field, and should be sensitive to the results of other fields. The innovative technology may often come from the technology of the other field.

 The JAPT consists of many scientists and engineers with various subjects such as geology, geophysics, drilling, production, reservoir etc. and all of them can exchange their knowledge and opinion through the annual convention and /or through the JAPT journals published bi-monthly, which may cause to create the innovation of technology.

 There are three standing technical committees in the JAPT, which are the exploration, drilling, reservoir and production committees respectively, and the professionals in each committee are contributing to the advancement of their own technology, and exchange their research subjects between committees. The JAPT maintains the close relationship with foreign society in oil industry through the international affairs committee which is also one of the standing committees of the JAPT,

 I hope the activity of our Association continues to contribute to the improvement of the petroleum technology in Japan for long, and be more attractive especially for the young scientists and engineers.