“When starting out my career at Saga Petroleum in the late 1970s, about ten years after the first oil discovery in the Norwegian sector in 1968, I was curious to learn about the oil industry. I therefore regularly read the World Oil and Oil & Gas Journal but did not get the answers I was looking for. My colleagues, most of whom were also new to the industry, were of little help”, explains Carstens in an email.
“I felt like in a knowledge vacuum. Working for Saga in Houston for some time was a real eye-opener, which broadened my horizon”, Carstens continues. Starting a journal for explorationists did not surface until 20 years later. “It only happened after I had 5 years of experience running a journal for geologists in Norway”, he adds.
For a long time, I believed visiting readers in their own working environment was the only way to interact with readers, but then came social media and the game was turned upside down..
Connecting with the readership is a key aspect for any editor. “The best way to interact with the readers has for me been to go to visit them in their own working environment and be present at seminars and conferences”, Carstens adds. “For a long time, I believed there was no other way, but then came social media and turned the game upside down.”
A daunting prospect?
Many people think it is daunting to fill a 90-page magazine with interesting content six times a year and come up with ideas that cover the remit of the publication, but Carstens does not share that experience. “In fact”, he says, “it has rather been the opposite, we did not have enough pages and manpower to cover all the stories that we wanted to include.”
Carstens worked at PGS before embarking on his move into the publishing business, which just one of the reasons why he has always been a supporter of including seismic lines in the magazine. The concept of having seismic foldouts in the magazine is one of his ideas.
Asked about his current favourite seismic line, Carstens says: “As of now, I am preoccupied with the Ice Age, the reason being that in 2023 it is 200 years since the Danish-Norwegian professor Jens Esmark discovered an end moraine in the Norwegian mountains and concluded – as the very first one in the world – that Norway and Scandinavia must have been covered by a thick ice sheet a long time ago. My favourite seismic line is therefore bound to be one that covers a gas reservoir in the North Sea (Peon) that consists of sand deposited by a glaciofluvial delta during the Ice Age.”
But it’s not only seismic data Carstens comes out of bed for. He is also behind the election of Norway’s national rock, which took place in 2008. The winner at the time, Larvikite, is amongst his favourites too, even though oil explorationists will not often come across this type of rock: “It is an igneous rock made up of entirely feldspar (monzonite), so not really the type of rock you would drill in the North Sea”, the editor concludes.
