And there is more to come. The keen GEO ExPro reader will have learnt from our last edition that there is interesting oil and gas potential in both the Gulf of Mexico and Iraq that still needs to be exploited. The BP Keathley Canyon find proves the point, and the discovery of a new giant field in the highly prospective, under-explored Kurdistan region of North-East Iraq was also recently announced (page 74). The field, known as Miran, is thought to contain between 2.3 and 4.2 billion barrels of oil in place. As told in this edition’s Hot Spot (page 80), giants are also a definite possibility in mature basins where most explorationists have left, leaving it to the engineers to produce the last droplet.
It is a matter of data, knowledge and technology. But, it is also a matter of being optimistic. The true explorationist is a stayer, while at the same time being wise enough to leave when a basin is not living up to its expectations – although the latter, of course, is largely dependent of what kind of field sizes the oil company is searching for.
The Norwegian Barents Sea and the deep water Norwegian Sea have not lived up to expectations, as formulated in the Resource Report issued by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate on September 1 (page 34). We are curious to see who the stayers will be in these huge basins that may yet contain giants, left for the true explorationists to find.
