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…
Oil & Gas
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…
Does oil really stop diagenesis?
It is all about timing. That is the main conclusion when reading a new paper recently published by Olav Walderhaug and Kristin Porten from Equinor. The paper is mostly about…
Wildcat activity in the Latin American Atlantic Margin
All eyes are on the Stabroek Block, where ExxonMobil and its partners have embarked on a significant three-well drilling program. The campaign, which commenced in April 2025, includes the Hamlet-1,…
Drilling deeper for new resources in Uzbekistan
Domestic gas production has rapidly declined in Uzbekistan over the last few years, to the point where the country became a net importer since 2023 to meet demand. This has…
Libya – exploration stories
In his book “The prize”, Daniel Yergin describes how Libya’s entry on the global oil stage in the 1950s was spectacular and engineered wisely. Yergin quotes the Libyan petroleum minister:…