Finding oil in synclines
This week, I came across the concept of finding oil in synclines on a number of unrelated occasions. It simply shows how diverse geology and exploration are. The first example…
Oil & Gas
The geoscience of decommissioning
“ Let’s not try to sugarcoat it, it wasn’t always easy”, she continues. “The pandemic unfolded, and taking care of homeschooling, a full-time job and completing the university modules on…
Drilling deeper than the primary target – the next frontier?
The idea for this story was born when I saw a LinkedIn post from Mike Smith in the USA in which he wrote about a well in the Gulf of…
Imagine – heating your house using gas produced by 1.3 billion-year-old blue-green algae
Compared to gas from the Beetaloo Basin, shale gas from the USA is just a teenager, with the age of the Pennsylvanian source rocks hovering around 350 million years. The…
Canada – and the workhorse behind its continued rise in oil production
With Equinor breaking the news last month that its Sitka prospect only contained non-commercial amounts of oil, another disappointing drilling result hit the exploration community in Canada. Sitka was supposed…
Why political endorsement of the oil and gas industry won’t bring back the majors straight away
It is too easy to think that a policy reversal in favour of oil and gas exploration such as the one that was recently announced for New Zealand will immediately…
It was not a geologist who found oil at Spindletop
It is a murky Friday morning, and it looks as if the sky is about to let go of some more rain anytime. The South Texas plain is flat, vast…
Has Norway’s drive to find more gas in the Barents Sea paid off yet?
Fuelled by the gas crisis that unfolded in Europe following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Norwegians voiced hopes that the Barents Sea was the place where additional gas resources were…
Oman – beneath the surface
Much has been written, including in this magazine, about the fantastic outcrop geology of Oman, the wonderful exposure, the preservation of salt at surface in the arid climate, and the…
Africa on course for busiest year since 2020
“Combined with the commercial success rate for the wells drilled so far being better than 50%, this year is looking promising for hydrocarbon exploration across the African continent”, said Jamie…
A coup for the country
The Ministry of Energy and Mines in Peru (Minem) recently indicated that the oil industry is ‘being reactivated’. And so far, the signs are indeed pointing in that direction, particularly…
Another gas discovery confirmed in Colombia, but the real excitement has yet to start
“You’ll be hard-pressed not to find gas out there”, was Joshua Turner’s response on LinkedIn to the news of Petrobras’ reported success drilling the Uchuva-2 appraisal well. The area where…