When perforating below the Free Water level makes sense
“It may be the last oil field development in the Dutch sector,” upstream analyst Bert Manders told me the other day. The IJssel field development in the northern part of…
Oil & Gas
US Permian Basin – the largest injection experiment
If you look at the volume of water versus hydrocarbons produced from the Permian Basin per day, the basin would surely qualify as being predominantly a water production exercise: 20…
One block, one basin
The Thailand Department of Mineral Fuels has just announced a licence round in the Mergui Basin, Andaman Sea. Interestingly, they have decided to license the area as a single massive…
Understanding the “Minimum Economic Field Size” concept and aggregating targets
Applying a “Minimum Economic Field Size” (MEFS) to your prospect assessment is a key process in quantifying the probability of finding hydrocarbon accumulations of a volume large enough to develop…
What is the driver for drilling two costly exploration wells offshore Bulgaria?
The spudding of wildcat Vinekh-1 in the Han Asparuh block marks the entry of Bulgaria into high-impact deepwater biogenic gas exploration in the Western Black Sea. And that’s not all,…
Unlocking the deep offshore potential of the Mahanadi Basin
The eastern Continental Margin of India (ECMI) is a 2,500 km long passive margin that comprises the following peri-cratonic basins from south to north, the Cauvery, Krishna-Godavari, Mahanadi, and Bengal…
The absurdity of security… or… comfortable being uncomfortable
My father, 90, is a product of the random precariousness of this world. His mother’s first husband died at sea, washed overboard in a storm, whilst his father’s first wife…
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…
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…