Will Greenland be the next oil hotspot?
These days, it is quite common to hear that frontier exploration is a thing of the past. But what is about to happen in Greenland this year should cast some…
Oil & Gas
Exploration in the vast marine expanse of Oceania
Texas-based Palau Pacific Energy (PPE) is the operator of the North Block Concession, off the northern part of the Republic of Palau, east of the Philippines, and is planning the…
Predicting viscosity in an undrilled panel of a deep-water field in West Africa
In 2023, the rapid oil production decline from the Bombadil Field (fictitious name), deep-water West Africa, triggered the necessity to develop additional resources. This is the moment prospect E appears…
Before the collapse in oil production, Venezuela saw another collapse – the mass firing of most of PDVSA’s technical staff
Many people on LinkedIn wrote about the dramatic decline in oil production from Venezuela from 3 million barrels a day in 1998 to only a third of that twenty years…
The Gambia’s offshore acreage is hot again
The West-African margin is back in the exploration spotlight, not only because of yesterday’s announcement by Shell to drill more wells on their PEL-39 licence in Namibia – but also…
New modelling study reveals a petroleum system overlying oceanic crust offshore Equatorial Guinea
The deepwater Douala-Rio Muni Basin (DRMB) is a non-volcanic, Mesozoic-Cenozoic rifted passive margin located offshore in Equatorial Guinea (EG), West Africa. Commercial oil and gas fields have been discovered on…
Unlocking Egypt’s Western Desert: The next Eagle Ford?
When people think of unconventional oil, their minds probably go straight to North America, where long horizontals and multilaterals drilled in heavily faulted plays have unlocked massive gas, liquids, and…
Imaging prospective sedimentary strata offshore Equatorial Guinea
In recent years, exploration has increasingly shifted toward Cretaceous deep-water sandstones across the broader Atlantic Basin, resulting in a series of major discoveries over the past 15 years. Considerable potential…
Why P10/P90 prospect ratios are meaningless without involving the geology
In many exploration departments, the ratio between the low-case P90 volume and the high-case P10 volume of a prospect is used to assess the distribution of its volume estimates. Frontier…
A sense of urgency
While people in Bolivia easily spend two days queuing up at fuel stations these days – the country has very quickly turned from an exporter to a net importer of…
The search for barrels in Bissau – exploration renascimento in the southern MSGBC
Investor confidence is returning to the West Africa oil frontier, with major oil companies taking large basin-scale positions in Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The map of West Africa offshore…
Offshore Otway Basin drilling campaign
Stratigraphic column of the Otway Basin, Australia. Source: NVentures. The Otway Basin, offshore Victoria and Tasmania, is undergoing a significant drilling campaign, using the Transocean Equinox semi-submersible rig, aimed at…