The love of reducing complexity
Displayed in a corridor near the reception at the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate in Stavanger is a five meter long glass print of a Late Devonian core from the Embla field.…
Geology & Geophysics
Leslie Kimberlite core
The history of diamond exploration in the Northwest Territories began in 1981 with Charles Fipke and Stewart Blusson sampling the Mountain Diatreme in the Mackenzie Mountains. While this prospect did…
An analogue for Ephesus?
BP has just completed the Ephesus or Cape Creel exploration well off the northeast coast of Canada, which has unfortunately been reported dry. The main target of the well was…
Using GR and dipmeter, it is possible to differentiate between proximal and distal settings (parallel to flow) in deep-water environments?
Deep-water depositional environments add another level of complexity compared to many other environments”, says expert Bryan Cronin when I visit him in his sea-front cottage in Aberdeen. Bryan has been…
Is it possible to differentiate between meandering and braided river deposits using gamma-ray logs?
For most people working in subsurface teams, discussions related to the interpretation of depositional facies on the basis of well logs are part of the daily routine. The more geologists…
Well logs and facies interpretation – Who gets it right?
For most people working in subsurface teams, discussions related to the interpretation of depositional facies on the basis of well logs are part of the daily routine. The more geologists…
Sequences, sea-level curves and predictive power: Assuming simplicity does not correctly predict complexity
Pre-drill predictions of basin-fill strata, in the absence of substantial supporting data, have been a key objective of seismic and sequence stratigraphic methods including global sea-level curves since the original…
More wells should be drilled with water-based mud
“All cuttings brought to surface need to be shipped ashore when they are contaminated with oil-based mud (OBM)”, says Anita Hansen in a recent conversation. Anita has decades’ worth of…
Challenging ground conditions for Norwegian offshore wind
“The ocean bottom conditions on the Norwegian continental shelf are challenging and vary from place to place, so they must be examined in detail”, says Lars Jensen, geophysicist at the…
Eocambrian outcrops and hydrocarbons in Southern Oman
The author took part in a 10-day industry field trip to study the Huqf and younger exposures in 2011, from which many outcrop photos are used to illustrate this article.…
A new global sea-level curve
Traditional long-term eustatic sea-level reconstructions suffer from uncertainty in stratigraphic interpretations of the rock record, which leads to ambiguity. Sea-level reconstructions from plate tectonic modelling are limited in use due…
Cutting data – please handle with care!
“It’s not precise at all, so please handle with care”, is one of the first things Anita Hansen tells me when we meet on Teams. We spoke about working with…