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…
Oil & Gas
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:…
The shrinking pool of large international E&P companies
The group of large international E&Ps has been steadily shrinking. Over the past five years, companies in the peer group, including Noble Energy, Marathon, and Hess, have been acquired. These…
India – Andaman Islands – drilling update
In late September, Oil India (OIL) announced the presence of gas recovered during intermittent flow on testing at its Vijaya Puram-2 well in the offshore eastern Andaman block AN-OSHP-2018/1, with…
Open for business, again
“We have to inject life back into the economy and avoid de-industrialisation,” said Shane Jones during a webinar yesterday, hosted by Ross Compton from the EnerGeo Alliance. Mr Jones is…
Why target the surface synclines in the flat foreland of a fold-and-thrust belt?
Imagine an onshore petroleum province that has three proven plays and a supergiant oil field suddenly opening up for international business and exploration companies. Except, it has no modern seismic…
Better illuminating the Rotliegend beneath a heavily deformed overburden
In April 2025, the main stakeholders in the offshore energy landscape in the Netherlands signed the so-called “Sector Accord”, which brought more clarity and momentum to exploring for and subsequently…
Kharas-1 well might have two surprises in store
As the exploration community read the news around Rhino Resources’ Volans-1X “high liquid-yield gas condensate” discovery this week – is it good news to have proven yet another fluid type?…
Revisiting the southern boundary of Sangomar
Recently published maps of the Sangomar field offshore Senegal depict the southern boundary of the accumulation exactly lining up with the maritime boundary between Senegal and The Gambia, suggesting that…
Exploring young petroleum systems comes with risks
Any exploration well carries risk, and ultimately, it is the drill bit that will either prove or disprove a play concept. In South Korea’s Ulleung Basin, despite the presence of…