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The global energy sector from a subsurface perspective

Vol. 21

Issue 3

The third issue of this year takes you on a subsurface journey from the East Palawan Basin in the Philippines, via Sydney’s and Melbourne’s shallow subsurface and Norway’s Lower Cretaceous Agat sands to the Santos Basin in Brazil. And nicely slotted in, you’ll find a new column by Rodney Garrard, who discusses the concept of Net Energy, and all the other articles from our technically diverse team of regular contributors.

The cover story, and the front page illustration, will discuss an element of the energy transition that is relatively under-represented in the energy debate: shallow geothermal energy. We talk to three key people from this sector in Sweden, Australia and Canada to learn how the shallow subsurface is a great candidate to help decarbonise heating.

You’ll also read about Bill Shea’s fascinating journey as he started and built Sharp Reflections, and you’ll hear from the EAGE’s current president how chicken relates to the energy transition. Have a good read!

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Columns

FIRSTS

10 – The East Med – still the game changer it was branded as? – by Dr Carole Nakhle

12 – Energy matters – by Rodney Garrard

14 – Regional Update from China – by Ian Cross

16 – Striking oil – Mopane

INSIGHTS

99 – The rise of production geology – by Raffik Lazar

100 – HotSpot – Chasing Orange Basin success on the South American Conjugate Margin – by Jonathan Leather

102 – Riedel shears as kinematic indicators – by Molly Turko

103 – Heat flow as a basin model calibration? Not really – by David Rajmon

105 – Nothing beats the field – The cream of the outcrop – by Arndt Peterhänsel and Maggie Murison

106 – The geological record of a highly eruptive part of North Sea history – by Max Casson and Geir Helgesen

Features

COVER STORY

18 – Shallow geothermal – A deep penetration in the geo-energy market

NORTH WEST EUROPE

30 – “The best recipe for a business adventure to succeed is not to have a plan B”

33 – Exploring for gas – for the first time

34 – The gas blowout that continues to have an effect even after almost 60 years

CONTENT MARKETING

24 – Norwegian North Sea: Identifying details of Lower Cretaceous sand fairways on the Måløy Slope – CGG

48 – New plays in Southern Santos Basin revealed by large-scale, high quality 3D Multi-Client seismic – TGS

66 – New GeoStreamer X multi-azimuth seismic dataset in the Norwegian Sea unlocks new prospectivity – PGS

92 – Orpheus in the Mialara Sub-Basin – Searcher

FEATURES

36 – How careful core description and detailed biostratigraphic analysis can delineate sub-seismic reservoir zones in a highly mud-prone system

40 – Using seismic velocity to derisk oil exploration

43 – Returning exploration to Sri Lanka

46 – There are plenty of positive indications for hydrocarbons in Zanzibar, including oil

PORTRAITS

54 – Playing with seismic processing as a parameter during inversion – Bill Shea

58 – Natural gas, playing chicken on the energy transition road – Edward Wiarda

GEOTHERMAL ENERGY

62 – The first high-temperature aquifer thermal energy storage project in Europe

63 – Why Taiwan is looking at geothermal energy with a lot of interest

64 – The deepest closed-loop borehole drilled in the UK

SUBSURFACE STORAGE

74 – Are we moving into the age of the pore-space paradox?

76 – CO2 storage in a tank

77 – “A poor site that fails to meet the criteria for safe subsurface storage”

TECHNOLOGY

80 – How the winner of a technology competition made room for the losers to take over the market

81 – The Low Earth Orbit satellites are coming

82 – Getting increasingly complicated reservoirs to surface

NEW GAS

84 – Natural hydrogen – as you may not have seen it before

85 – How the threat of military conflict created a successful helium storage project

86 – Acquiring seismic data for oil exploration in 1980, but using it to find hydrogen now

DEEP SEA MINERALS

88 – A frontrunner in deep-sea mineral production

89 – USA looking to join the race

90 – Gathering forces for marine mineral mapping

Articles

The cream of the outcrop

This panorama shows an Upper Miocene succession, la Rambla de Lanujar, in the Betic Cordillera, featuring in one of our field trips to Tabernas, Almería, Spain. Apart from being a Read More

USA looking to join the race

The Metals Company may be the first company – commercial or state-owned – in the world to start full-scale deepsea mining. That makes their quarterly and annual reports a well-worth Read More

The rise of production geology

Before anything, let’s clear the water: Production geology is not a cross-over between the cinema industry and our good ol’ geology. Production geology refers to unravelling the geological intricacies in Read More

Orpheus in the Mialara Sub-Basin

East of Eden: The Mialara basin, the Philippines’ last low-risk frontier for exploration greatness Arguably the first subterranean explorer to return from the untrodden lands below was the Argonaut Orpheus, Read More

Net energy matters

Whilst these sources have a supporting role to play in the energy system, the majority of energy sources for powering the world should be high density, low emissions, low land Read More

Basement plays rock in China

Over recent years,  a number of significant oil and gas offshore discoveries and successful appraisal programmes have been reported in China, even though it is often unclear if the “discoveries” Read More