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The discovery of oil and gas one hundred and fifty years ago, in Romania, United States and in further other states, has lead the way of human development towards a society based on hydrocarbons whereas the technical and technological competition between companies and states for the ultimate supremacy evolved and is still in progress. In the past century, the two world wars and the most recent conflicts we were and are contemporary with (Falkland Islands war, Iraq, Libya, Syria etc.) began with and for energy resources which resulted in a fierce battle on the front of research and streamline of this field. The technical and technology transfer in many areas, including the oil and gas one, disregarded ideological barriers imposed by the “Cold War” so that, through legal methods (imported licenses) and “reverse engineering” (intelligence), it carried through. Since the emergence of the “drilling method with rotary table”, discovered by the Romanian engineer Ioan Basgan which revolutionized the worldwide deep drilling technology and whose patent is still disputed by Romania and the United States, up to offshore drilling platforms, high pressure blowout preventers, drilling rigs for mining and transport for extreme weather conditions and to the controversial method of extracting shale gas, the transfer of science, engineering and technology knew and will know no boundaries.

Although most of the worldwide scientific community accepted and supported the theory that oil and gas formed during remote geological eras, from organic matter under anaerobic conditions, on the bottom of the seas and oceans and that it migrated to the so-called rock collectors, exhaustible in time, in the last decades, some researchers brought forward the theory of inorganic origin (abiogene) of oil and gas formation, including the idea that it should be renewable. The detection and exploitation of the great oil and gas field White Tiger, located in the Vietnamese coasts, hosted in granite, impossible to explain using the biogenic theory, and the recent development of hydraulic fracturing technology for shale gas are at the frontier of a scientific leap which raises many other questions: is the oil era coming to an end or to a new beginning? If energy resources are renewable, how will the human society evolve? What long-term effects on the environment will be recorded by using polluting technologies?

The discovery of shale gas reopens the fierce struggle for energy control at regional and global level and reconfigures the geostrategic interests map of the great powers. The new technology of unconventional gas extraction, hydraulic fracturing has supporters andopponents on its size. But at the gate of scientific discoveries beats a new form of energy: the energy based on thorium. Cheaper, safer, less polluting.

In the late summer and early winter of 1986, under a happy combination of circumstances I had the privilege of visiting Paltinis-Sibiu and converse with renowned philosopher, poet, essayist, journalist and writer, Constantin Noica, scientific personality, trademark of the twentieth century disapproved and equally appreciated by contemporaries. Being designated an official to accompany to Paltinis ,close to Noica, I was present when the latter insisted to send in Bucharest the need to give more freedom, food and heat to the Romanians and reproach that Eminescu "was killed again ... ".Browsing, some time before, "Journal of Paltinis" of his disciple, Gabriel Liiceanu, an editorial extremely rare circulating among intellectuals of the period, with comments, more or less documented, "Transcendental Meditation", another hot topic , which was discussed in a whisper ... While walking around the villa 23, where the great philosopher lived low, the two stopped and talked enthusiastically about various topics. One of them was related to the effects of "post-perestrioka" and noted that Noica concluded that "moods reveal the facts ..." Learning that I’m a petroleum engineer, we talked about "the laziness of engineers, which led to technical and technological progress", "life in the depths and the decline of the petro-gas-bearing pools as a form of freedom", "perception of good and happiness according to interlocutors "topics that challenged me and aroused interest to decipher the meaning of the words said by the distinguished interlocutor in the years that followed.