In this paper, after touching on the trend of policies toward a decarbonized society as a background, the future outlook of energy resources including oil and natural gas was shown through the analysis of several scenarios. Based on these, the challenges of the oil development industry toward the transition to a decarbonized society were considered. As policy trends toward a decarbonized society, net zero emission/carbon neutral targets and the measures for it, and oil-and-gas-sector-related methane countermeasures and supply-side fossil fuel policies were seen. Through the analysis of several scenarios, a future outlook in energy resources including oil and natural gas was shown. Against a backdrop of the movement toward a low-carbon society by entities other than the government, the challenges of oil development industry, especially those in value chains, were introduced. Investors are demanding the disclosure and reduction of scope 3 emissions, and the finance provided by financial institutions to fossil fuel companies is being focused on. Regarding issues in value chains, in the downstream, major oil and gas companies have set net zero emission targets including emissions from the use of energy products, and in the upstream, attention is paid to upstream methane emissions, especially the movement of the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership （OGMP）. Voluntary credits for offsetting these emissions are also of interest.

Subsequently to the spread of Covid-19 pandemic, the upstream oil and gas companies are in transition to sustainable investment by adopting Carbon Neutral Strategies. US major oil companies, which had more short-cycle resources than their European counterparts, had been less motivated to invest into renewable energies; in the annual general meetings held in May 2021, however, US majors had to choose more proactive stances to what climate inspired investors proposed, including for example, Exxon’s selection of three external directors of activists’nomination to its board. European majors, who had been ahead of the energy transition curve by taking pragmatic approach of simultaneously investing into natural gas liquefaction and renewable energies, on the other hand, are trying to adjust their strategies to the changing pace of the energy transition, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Independent oil companies and national oil companies have their own challenges to manage in their respective countries and societies. Every oil and gas company is trying to renew its license to operate while energy transition is casting questions of achieving sustainability and responsibility of investments simultaneously. The challenge responsible upstream oil and gas companies are facing is to achieve the dual targets of balancing carbon neutrality and sustainable investments.

The project "Investigation of potential sites for CO₂ storage in Japan" has been carried out since 2014 as a joint project of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Ministry of the Environment with the aim of selecting multiple large-scale storage sites capable of storing more than 100 million tons of CO₂. Japan CCS Co., Ltd. has been entrusted with this project, and while developing a process for selecting suitable storage sites, has been conducting seismic survey, geological analysis, numerical simulation of geological CO₂ storage, etc. for candidate sites for storage offshore Japan. As a result of storage capacity evaluation using 3D seismic data until March 2020, the amount that can be stored in a total of seven sites was estimated to be about 9 billion tons. This storage capacity is evaluated by the volumetric method which evaluates the capacity of the pore space in reservoir rock, and does not take into account seal ability, injection well arrangement, injection properties, CO₂ movement, etc. In order to reduce uncertainty in assessing the amount of storage and to improve the accuracy of risk assessment, it is necessary to drill survey wells. The current goal is to select about three candidate sites for survey well drilling from a comprehensive perspective among prospective sites suitable for storage by around 2023.

The Dewa Bank Chain, located on the outer edge of the continental shelf offshore Akita, consists of banks and knolls tending north-south over about 100 km. In this chain, Shinguri Bank is topped by an obvious flat area that is thought to be mainly an abrasion platform that formed during the eustatic lowstand of the last glacial period. Based on three-dimensional seismic interpretation, depth of the platform ranges from 150 to 160 m at the deepest. However, the Last Glacial Maiximum（LGM）lasted until 20.5 Ka and the eustatic sea level at that time was 125~130 m lower than at present. Therefore, the abrasion platform of Shinguri Bank at the LGM is 10~25 m deeper at present than the sea level of the LGM. This suggests that the Shinguri Bank has subsided at an average of 0.49~1.22 m/kyr since 20.5 Ka. This rapid subsidence contrasts with the uplift tendency of the Oga Peninsula and differs from other knolls and banks in the Dewa Bank Chain, meriting an examination for the development history of the Quaternary tectonics and the influence of post LGM hydro-isostasy at the eastern coast of Sea of Japan.

The internal and external morphometric characteristics were described and formation process was discussed for the Iwaki submarine landslide（Iwaki SLS）, which was discovered at the sub-bottom of the continental shelf off Iwaki City, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, by three-dimensional（3D）seismic interpretation.

In this study area, the Lower Pleistocene was subdivided into nine layers based on the observation of seismic facies and seismic stratigraphic characteristics. Layers 1b to 4 were involved in the Iwaki submarine landslide, and twenty pop-up blocks and nine pop-up walls were formed in association with a group of conjugated reverse faults. The pop-up blocks, which were displaced upward with less deformation and remained almost as internal sedimentary structures, are interpreted to collapse at their fringe and eroded at the crest concurrently with pop-up displacement, supplying debris around the blocks.

The pop-up walls are arranged in nine lines warped arcuately in the downstream direction. All arrays of pop-up walls terminate at the northeast end against a linear side escarpment, and are in direct contact with un-moved sediments of the same horizon in the northeast area. The side escarpment at the southwest side is interpreted as strike-slip echelon faults.

The pop-up sequence was not revealed by the available dataset; however, circumstantial evidence suggests that sliding and pop-up movement in the Iwaki SLS occurred within a relatively short period of time.

The reduction of carbon dioxide （CO₂）, which is said to be one of the causes of global warming, has become an important issue to achieve "Carbon Neutral" in this world. In order to effectively reduce CO₂ emissions, various investments in environmental technologies are needed. One of these innovative technologies is Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage （CCS）, which captures and stores CO₂ emitted from industrial sectors, and Carbon Dioxide Capture, Utilization and Storage （CCUS）, which effectively utilizes this CO₂. We have developed two technologies to promote CCS/CCUS, HiPACT^® and DDR membrane.

HiPACT^® recovers CO₂ at high pressures from natural gas and synthesis gas, enabling cost reduction and energy saving in CCS. HiPACT^® has been jointly developed with BASF SE. A demonstration test has been successfully completed in Japan and the commercial plant has been built in Serbia.

DDR membrane is a high-efficiency CO₂ separation process using a DDR-type zeolite membrane. It is suitable for CO₂ separation from associated gas deriving from CO₂Enhanced Oil Recovery （EOR） which is one of the CCUS and natural gas with high CO₂ content. DDR membrane can enhance product yields because of very high selectivity for CO₂/CH₄. This technology is jointly developed by JGC Corporation and NGK Insulators, Ltd. A large-scale demonstration test is now on going in the United States of America.

Artificial intelligence（AI）technology has developed through several booms and winters, and has now become a familiar part of our lives. It is a reliable tool that can save labor and improve efficiency in very tedious tasks. On the other hand, AI technology is also attracting attention and being used in our oil and gas related industries to expand production and minimize the cost of crude oil and natural gas.

In this research, I would like to introduce several examples of AI applications in the field of geophysical exploration, including seismic exploration. One is in the area of data processing and the other is in the area of geological evaluation. I would also like to explain the pre-processing of input data that supports these applications.

We develop signal processing and imaging techniques for characterizing subsurface structure with utilizing raw vibroseis shot data before sweep correction. Vibroseis shots are often used for a land seismic survey, and the raw data of observation are typically converted to impulse-shot records with correlation of shot sweep and stacking. However, as we demonstrated here, the raw data are useful for providing additional valuable information. One opportunity we have is to clean up the vibroseis shot gathers by removing traffic noise in the raw data. Traffic noise is one of the strongest kinds of noise in the frequency range overlapped to the vibroseismic shots, and this noise contaminates the shot gathers. Diversity stacking helps to improve the signal-to-noise ratio （SNR）, but we develop a more advanced, and traffic-noise-oriented, filter with a machine-learning approach. This filter improves the SNR of shot gathers. Another opportunity is for near-surface velocity structure modeling. Near surface is important to know for topography correction of imaging （static collection） and shot and/or receiver couplings. However, the conventional vibroseismic shot geometry is not suitable to estimate these structures. We use ambient noise data recorded during the vibroseismic shot survey. Each sweep shot is 38 seconds and more than 10 sweep shots are repeated at each shot location. This means that we have 380 seconds of continuous data at each location. We use these data to extract surface waves using seismic interferometry, and estimate near-surface S-wave velocities from the surface waves. The velocity image provides detailed information of the structure at top 50 m along the entire survey.