MOPANE DOES NOT GIVE AWAY ITS SECRETS
Namibia is an exploration hotspot, and for that reason, many people flocked to the presentation that GALP was delivering about the Mopane discovery at the recent IMAGE Conference in Houston. But for those who now regret not having bought a ticket, rest assured, the talk was not what many had hoped it would be. A very generic workflow was presented, with no further details on the tests done, nor any well logs. We may need to wait until a farm-out deal announcement before hearing something about this supposedly sizeable discovery.
– This deal has now been announced the other day, with TotalEnergies taking on operatorship of Mopane. According to some analysts, the market did not show a great amount of enthusiasm for the opportunity: “GALP’s 15% share price drop and heavy attribution of the total consideration to a cost carry reveal lighter-than-expected buyer interest and capped upside for Venus,” said Andrew McConn from Enverus in a recent post.
WILL DENMARK OPEN ITS DOORS TO EXPLORATION AGAIN?
As the world entered lockdown in 2020, so was oil and gas exploration put into lockdown in Denmark during the same year. Denmark was not the only country making this call; Spain, New Zealand and France made the same decision to halt drilling for hydrocarbons. Only five years later, the tide had already turned for New Zealand, with exploration being on the cards again. Will Denmark follow? According to a Dane I spoke to recently, who has good connections in the sector, it may happen. “Our government takes a more pragmatic approach,” he said, “and some people even claim that Denmark is not as explored as some may think.”
BACK TO WORK AS A MUDLOGGER
Many have already complained about the lack of drilling activity in the UK North Sea, first and foremost caused by the tax hike imposed by the British government. The effects of this can be traced back across the whole industry, with companies laying off personnel, and skilled people trying to find work elsewhere. An obvious consequence of the lack of work in the UK is the fact that people who had been promoted to well site and operations geologists now find themselves accepting mudlogger jobs in Norway, the next-door neighbour, where drilling is more buoyant. “It is a sad state of affairs,” someone with knowledge of the matter told me.
BEING A NUMBER
I attended a talk the other day during which I had difficulties following what the presenter said. So, I decided to ask him for an email address. Similar to a lot of people at the conference, he had no business cards – something I do not understand, even in this day and age – so he showed me his email address on his phone. I should have taken a photo of it, but I foolishly decided to write it down in my little notebook instead. Where you can sometimes guess people’s email once you know their name, this will be impossible in Chinese academia; the email address is nothing more than a long number. I now understand why this person didn’t fancy having business cards printed.
A REFLECTION ON SOURCE ROCKS
“Most geologists tend to think that deep-marine environments are good for source rock deposition, but I see that most source rocks go away in these settings” – Andrew Pepper (ThisIsPetroleumSystem) during a presentation at IMAGE in Houston.
