Current forces in the markets, together with historical trends, combine to offer exciting prospects for geoscientists in the next decades. This discussion, contrary to many others, is an optimistic scenario of what is in store for our industry.

Despite the aberration of the 1980s, the demand for geoscientists will continue to grow well into the next century. A gap is widening between increasing opportunities in the petroleum industry and in he number of students being trained at the universities. Students entering the geosciences since the 1980s have turned towards environmental disciplines. However, opportunities in the environmental industry have peaked. Meanwhile, there are few people left in soft rock sedimentology, stratigraphy, and paleontology. The heyday of these disciplines was in the 1950s and 1960s. As the experts from those days retire or change profession by force or choice, the shortfall grows between the need for and the supply of people who can apply stratigraphic principles and concepts. For those dedicated sedimentologists, stratigraphers, and paleontologists who have stayed on, the message is "not to look back at what has happened, but to look at ways to widen your expertise". This is an opportunity for you and those disciplines to change and evolve to fill the existing and future needs of our industry. The most flexible ones, those with integration capabilities, will succeed.

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