Exploration drilling programme in Greenland postponed and slimmed down
Earlier this year, we reported on a planned two-well onshore exploration campaign to be carried out by Greenland Energy on Jameson Land, in the east of Greenland. At the time,…
Oil & Gas
Decommissioning and discovering at the same time
The Marlim field was discovered in 1985, on the back of the first proper exploration drive to test the potential of Brazil’s deepwater Campos basin. Oil was found in Oligocene…
The geological context of the North Cleopatra block
A few days ago, it was announced that the Velox-1X well, drilled in the North Cleopatra block offshore deep-water Egypt by Shell and partners, hit oil. The well, which was…
Deepwater’s playbook for delivering growth
Deepwater production remains a core part of the long-term energy supply mix. While production from conventional onshore and shallow-water assets is expected to remain broadly flat under our base case,…
Why dual-phase systems demand a new assessment approach
Various work-arounds attempt to compensate for these limitations, but each introduce their own artefacts. A common approach is to treat gas as a failure by assigning a “gas risk” and…
Why amplitude-supported prospects are not the silver bullet we are led to believe
“When you don’t see a scale bar at a seismic section that shows a nice bright spot, you should be scared”, says Ian Longley from GIS-Pax in a video in…
The increasing importance of DHI’s in the Rotliegend play of the Southern North Sea
It sounds odd, bearing in mind the quality of broadband seismic data available these days: unlocking an offshore gas province without using seismic DHI’s to de-risk exploration drilling. Yet, that…
How decommissioning slowly becomes more of an integral part of the E&P cycle
“For some, a career in decommissioning feels like a departure from traditional E&P geoscience roles,” says petroleum engineer Susan Moloney from Elemental Energies when we meet in the Aberdeen office…
The Sinapa saga
As with any exploration story, this story begins with a map that hides a secret. Salt, tall as a mountain, buried clear white veils of fluid rock, and a target…
Frontier volumes, near-field risk
Papua New Guinea (PNG) rarely features in the E&P headlines, but in fact, the country has a lot to offer when it comes to the exploration scene. TotalEnergies and partner…
Spatial variation in charge risk along the Guyana-Suriname margin
The Guyana-Suriname Basin is a Mesozoic rifted-passive margin along the northeastern coast of South America that has emerged as one of the most prolific deepwater petroleum provinces of the past…
Frontier exploration – Are we seeing a revival?
As I started writing this story, a contact in Iraq messaged me about a new well recently completed in the west of the country, near the border with Saudi Arabia.…