Twenty years ago, the moment finally arrived; the first results came in from wells that had been able to test the Brazilian pre-salt succession. Not that it wasn’t looked at before; for many years, explorationists already had ideas about oil being present beneath the thick layers of salt. But the imaging just wasn’t good enough. In that sense, it can be said that the Brazilian pre-salt play is the seismic play of the 2000-2010 decade, as much as the North Sea had that role in the 1970’s. It demonstrates the power of technology to help de-risk targets and, of course, the willingness to embrace that new information. For the cover story, we go back to the years following the first pre-salt discoveries and talk to the people who interpreted the cores taken. And they had to start from scratch, because what they saw was something they had not really seen before.
FIRSTS
8 – Subsurface noise
10 – Energy matters – by Rodney Garrard
11 – Regional update – by Ian Cross
12 – Striking oil – The geological context of Velox-1
INSIGHTS
96 – A geologist ruins everything – It doesn’t have to be that way– by Juan Cottier
97 – Reservoir modelling – From Mars to the Mediterranean
98 – HotSpot– Contrasting fortunesin Sub Saharan Africa – by NVentures
100 – Use your brines – Critical minerals – by István Nagy-Korodi
101 – Tech Tonics– Have we reached a point of singularity in the subsurface? Probably not – by Dan Austin
102 – Hands On – The innocuous question that rarely has an innocuous answer: “Why did you study geology?” – by Neal S. Turluck
103 – Petroleum Systems –How one biomarker does not make a new source rock – by Gion Kuper and Raingard Haberer-Kuper
104 – Geomechanics – A tale of a cave or how much in-place volume you might be missing – by Fermin Fernandez-Ibanez
105 – Faults and Fractures – From thrust faults to landslides – by Molly Turko
108 – Nothing beats the field – What do you see here? – by Phoebe Sleath
110 – Vertical Geology – Coring for beginners
COVER STORY
14 – The Australia of geology
EXPLORATION OPPORTUNITIES
20 – Using new data to unlock prospectivity in the Philippines – by Searcher
34 – Côte d’Ivoire: Reimaged datasets provide new geological insights within an exploration hotspot – by Viridien
52 – What to do if reprocessed seismic changes the view on your prospect? – by TGS
68 – Equatorial Guinea: Douala and Rio Muni risk reduction – by GeoexMCG
82 – Beyond AI: Why the future of geoscience software is trusted subsurface intelligence – by Earth Science Analytics
OIL & GAS
26 – When fast gas becomes slow gas – by James Mullins
27 – The rise of the onshore – by Lauren Hunter and David Thomson
28 – “I don’t want dry holes, and I only want big prospects”
29 – How fast-track field developments run the risk of ignoring key reservoir details
30 – Exploration drilling programme in Greenland postponed and slimmed down
31 – From hydraulic jumps to Goldilocks zones
32 – Beyond the list – by Hana Kabazi and Amii Rozell
33 – The Discovery Thinking Forum
FEATURES
40 – Upstream developments along West Africa’s Transform Margin
43 – Is the oil industry cannibalising itself in geoscience recruitment?
45 – Unlocking a century of subsurface intelligence – Hafiz B. Jalil, Suzana Bt. Abdul Hadi, Herry Maulana and Guy Oliver
48 – When precision becomes a trap – by Snorre Heimsund
PORTRAITS
58 – “I am not a geologist. I am a petroleum geologist”, story of Enzo Zappaterra
GEOTHERMAL ENERGY
64 – Why the Rittershoffen geothermal plant came to a halt – by Clément Baujard and Vincent Maurer
65 – The market challenges that force the shallow geothermal industry to continue innovating
66 – A unique look back at a successful geothermal project – by Elliot Yearsley
SUBSURFACE STORAGE
74 – A rosy pressure picture
75 – Better understanding of hydrate formation in carbon storage projects
74 – Global gas storage projects on the rise
SEABED MINERALS
78 – Invisible gold discovery in Japan – by Ronny Setså
79 – Polymetallic nodule discovery onshore Peru
80 – Seamount summit crusts – by Ronny Setså
NEW GAS
88 – Updip advantage in the Rukwa Basin
89 – The Bald Eagle has landed
90 – MAX Power’s hydrogen appraisal campaign – by Arnout Everts
TECHNOLOGY
92 – Technology is not the bottleneck anymore
93 – Disentangling the internal structure of sand injectites
94 – A better appreciation of fault interpretation uncertainty when it comes to well planning
