Devonian reefs – Canada
The Early to Middle Devonian was a period of global evolution of carbonate coral and stromatoporoid reef builders. Many carbonate build-ups of that age are observed around the world in…
Geology & Geophysics
Is there a coal exploration industry?
If oil and gas are dirty words when talking about energy, it is even more dangerous to mention the c*** word. However, despite the rapidly rising share of renewables in…
How to identify fluid migration with 1D models and temperature data
One revealing experience occurred while I was working in a basin offshore Thailand. I only had temperature data from several wells. Once a 1D model was built for each of…
Northern North Sea: A decade of seismic acquisition and exploration success
Figure 1. Discoveries within the NVG surveys from 2018 – 2024. Source: Viridien. In this article, we go back more than ten years to 2013, when the area west and…
A mystery
The upper Permian Zechstein of the UK Southern North Sea is experiencing a little revival these days. The main reason is that gas and some oil were discovered last year…
Mining a “source rock” for the battery industry
It is too easy to think that oil and gas is at one end of the energy spectrum, and renewables at the other. In fact, when digging a bit deeper,…
The exposed Interior Seaway – Just layer cake geology?
If anything, long and continuous outcrops often suggest that geology is much more varied in a vertical than in a horizontal direction. This beautiful photo from the Bisti Badlands in…
Death by 0.9
During an evening lecture organized by the Geoscience Energy Society of Great Britain (GESGB) in Aberdeen the other day, a discussion unfolded about how to risk play elements in a…
Less is more – uncertainty in rock properties
My last article opened a topic of uncertainty in basin models. Discussion following its publication brought up an interesting research paper describing how increasing model complexity increases uncertainty in its…
Static reservoir modelling to transition from POS to POM
Probability Of Success (POS) is the central concept for petroleum exploration. POS is used to predict dry well occurrence, risk an exploration portfolio of prospects and eventually decide what gets…
Horsetail splays, wing cracks, and splay faults
These funny faults go by several names, but traditionally refer to the secondary faults and fractures that develop near the tips of a primary fault. Although these can occur on…
Exploration geology – science or art?
During my career in the oil industry, exploration geology has changed enormously. Not long after I joined Shell in February 1979, my son, who was play school age, asked me…