Why traffic light play maps are useless
When exploring a new area, it is common for E&P companies to produce traffic light maps, with red areas being the ones where one of the key play elements is…
Oil & Gas
Steadily, Saudi Arabia keeps finding more hydrocarbons
Volumes weren’t mentioned in the press release that was issued early April, but the tone was clear nonetheless; Aramco is determined to find new volumes of oil and gas, and…
Back on the shelf
As TotalEnergies is moving ahead developing its deep-water discoveries in Block 58 in Suriname waters, there is a drive to discover more resources nearby. And rather than focusing on deep…
“Almost every foot of rock has oil in it”
For those people who don’t work in the US onshore oil sector, names such as the Permian and the Appalachian may still sound familiar, as it is these basins that…
Intense exploration and appraisal in the Norwegian Barents Sea
The Norwegian Barents Sea has been the venue for a continuous campaign of exploration and appraisal over the past year. As shown in Figure 1, to date, there have been…
Making small pools work
Despite there still being major uncertainties for operators on the UK Continental Shelf, as Niall McLean from Brodies Solicitors clearly explained in his talk about the Finch ruling, when talking…
Business can only get better
In anticipation of the tax changes announced by the UK government in October 2024, corporate merger and acquisition activity accelerated in 2024 and into 2025. These deals involved companies looking…
Drilling around mud diapirs
Mud diapirs have long been enigmatic structures in the subsurface. With older seismic data being of insufficient resolution to properly map them, companies often took a careful approach when it…
Why the term “fault block” is a useless way to describe a trap
In most prospective basins, the simpler and larger anticlines and high-side fault blocks have mostly been drilled. In order to find what is remaining, explorers can look for new trap…
Fresh water in deep-marine sandstones – how come?
“A famous example of anchoring is finding a high resistivity anomaly on a structure in a deep-water turbidite play and assuming it can only be petroleum related,” wrote exploration geologist…
The hottest play in Canada
At the IMAGE Conference in August 2024, I met some wellsite geologists from Calgary. They were the first to tell me about the Clearwater Formation and that drilling has been…
Why is the Orinoco Delta not known for its oil and gas?
The Orinoco Delta in the east of Venezuela occupies a massive area that is virtually devoid of infrastructure and people. In order to reach the mouth of the most important…