Potential energy

The reason we drill for oil and gas in the way that we do is, largely, because that’s how we’ve always done it. But as the more easily obtainable reserves begin to dwindle, the established techniques are becoming less useful.

When it becomes harder both to find and to extract fossil fuel reserves, how can current advances in engineering help to meet the demand for hydrocarbons and their products?

This is the question facing Geoff Maitland, professor of energy engineering at Imperial College London’s recently launched Energy Futures Laboratory (EFL). While the laboratory is looking at the whole spectrum of energyrelated research, Maitland is focused on the parts of the jigsaw concerned with fossil fuels, their exploitation and their transformation into useful products.

Imperial College is the sort of place that people find hard to leave behind and, like many of his colleagues, Maitland is on his second stint there. Starting out as a physical chemist, with a degree and doctorate from Oxford, he initially followed an academic path, working as an ICI-sponsored postdoc at Bristol University and transferring to Imperial as a chemical engineering lecturer until 1986.