Introduction to Session II

As Harold Smith mentioned in his opening remarks, the purpose of this symposium is to provide the opportunity and, hopefully, the stimulus for petroleum analysts to reflect on “WhereWe Are”, “How We Got There”, and most important of all, “Where We Are Going”. We all recognize that many of tomorrow's problems will not yield to today's tools. If we acknowledge that, as competent scientists, we are obligated toanticipate what some of these problems may be, it follows that we should also appraise the trends in the development of analytical methods, so that we can develop a feeling for what tomorrow's tools may be like. Over the past two decades instrumental methods have become more and more important to the petroleum analyst, until today it's almost like losing your right arm if a filament burns out in a mass spectrometer or in a gas chromatograph.