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Exploration
The state of global gas exploration
“If we look back at the years before the pandemic and the Ukraine invasion, the only countries where we saw a consistent search for gas were the countries around the…
A working petroleum system on purely oceanic crust
*Christian Niño currently works at Petronas and Martin Zubiri works at Pan American Energy. For a long time, exploring for hydrocarbons in the deep waters of the Gulf of Guinea,…
CNOOC makes largest offshore hydrocarbon discovery in special rock formation. What is that about?
Last week, I was struck by a headline published by media outlet OGV. It read: CNOOC makes world largest offshore hydrocarbons discovery in special rock formation. Reading through the article,…
BP shores up gas reserves West Papua, Indonesia
BP reportedly made a significant new offshore gas discovery in the large West Papua Berau PSC, Indonesia, with the Kepe-Kepe-1 sidetrack, according to oil and gas regulator SKK Migas. The…
Development and Production
What is the longest well drilled along hole?
Based on a post on social media, in which we asked our followers to name the well with the highest step-out ratio – the ratio between horizontal distance and vertical…
Oil – and increasingly gas – on steroids
“We went from two to nineteen mudlogging units recently”, said a representative from Geolog at the IPTC Conference in Saudi Arabia this week. “It is obvious that things are picking…
Analysing a hydraulically fractured horizontal core to assess refrac candidates
Is a refrac worth the investment? That is what we investigated in an extensive study. A key piece of data in the study included a horizontal core adjacent to a…
Resources
The vast brushlands of West Texas and New Mexico hold a miracle
Nestled in the vast brushlands of West Texas and New Mexico, the Permian Basin quietly outstrips the oil production of countries like Iraq, Iran, or Canada, a fact that often…
The future lies in low-perm reservoirs – not only in the desert but possibly in deep-water too
We received quite a few comments on our short story about the commencement of tight gas production from the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia. Thanks to that, there is an…
Lots of activity but limited resource growth
Every year in January, the Norwegian Offshore Directorate – which until the turn of the year was called the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate – summarizes the activities on the Norwegian continental…
Exploration Opportunities (foldouts)
Salt of the Earth: Imaging the Gulf’s hidden structures
Gulf of America: Integrating technologies to see beyond the salt The Gulf of America (GOA) remains a central pillar of US energy infrastructure, and its future potential is increasingly tied…
Morocco’s oceanic crust – A new exploration paradigm
Jurassic source rocks on oceanic crust – Establishing the new ‘hot’ topic offshore Morocco Morocco providing an “in-vogue” frontier Unequivocally, source rocks can generate significant quantities of hydrocarbons atop oceanic…
“Seeking the Sweet Spot in offshore Ecuador’s Sweet Shop”
Searcher use of modern processing algorithms to unleash the hidden sweetness in Ecuador’s legacy offshore seismic Setting the scene Figure 1: Offshore Ecuador Main Tectonic Elements. The destructive margin setting…
Content Marketing
DUG Elastic MP-FWI Imaging: From field data to quantitative interpretation
DUG Elastic MP-FWI Imaging delivers high-resolution elastic rock property outputs for quantitative interpretation — directly from field data. DUG Elastic MP-FWI Imaging is a unique approach to seismic processing and…
DUG Elastic MP-FWI Imaging: Better physics, better results
The Earth is inherently elastic. As data processing has advanced to better honour physics, we have continually refined our ability to understand the subsurface. Land seismic data, such as the…
Image high-impedance contrasts effortlessly with DUG Elastic MP-FWI Imaging
High impedance contrasts a problem? Never fear. DUG Elastic MP-FWI Imaging is here! DUG Elastic MP-FWI Imaging is a unique approach to seismic processing and imaging which turns the traditional…
Geothermal
Has enhanced geothermal been proven at scale?
A few days ago, Fervo published production data from their geothermal Project Red in Nevada that answers some of the questions posed in previous GeoExpro articles. However, it also raises…
Slim is smart
“Why drill 150 mm when 120 mm will do?” That simple question sparked an ongoing discussion between Bruce and his son Ryan Gatherer. Bruce has spent more than 35 years…
From the shores of Lake Geneva to NEOM in Saudi
Nicolas de Varreux. “What are you doing?” Nicolas de Varreux asked his neighbour in Switzerland when a drilling rig rolled into his garden back in the summer of 2005. He…
Deep Sea Minerals
Subsurface Storage
The subsurface is a key factor in explaining the poor result of the recent Danish CCS tender
Denmark is one of the countries that aims to be a leader when it comes to climate change mitigation measures. That’s why the government launched a tender process in October…
Carbon capture and mineralisation pilots in the Middle East
44.01 named their company after the mass of the molecule that is central to their business: Carbon Dioxide. They use CO2 captured from industry or the atmosphere and dissolve it…
Diverting the flow: The hidden power of overburden barriers
Since Mark Lakos joined Rock Flow Dynamics (RFD) from Wintershall Dea a bit more than a year ago – a job that brought him to Russia and Egypt – he has…
Technology
Mistaking speed for progress
Much of the AI we see today is very domain-specific and, in my mind, one-dimensional. People continue to operate in their own realms, developing algorithms that produce results at great…
When the reliability of your project depends on a single tool at hundreds of meters depth
An ESP can fail at any time, even before geothermal projects officially start. We recently reported on such a special case of ESP failure in the southwest of England, at…
Norway’s AlphaGo moment: Why 2025 changed the game
In 2016, Google’s AlphaGo played “Move 37” against Lee Sedol – a move that looked bafflingly wrong to human experts but ultimately secured the win. In 2025, the Norwegian Continental…
Geology
How careful core description and detailed biostratigraphic analysis can delineate sub-seismic reservoir zones in a highly mud-prone system
This study was undertaken by PetroStrat in collaboration with Stratum AS (QEMSCAN), Barnwell Parker Geoscience Limited (seismic interpretation) and HM Research Associates (heavy mineral provenance analysis). Together, we have completed…
Heat flow as a basin model calibration? Not really
Many exploration geologists who work in data-lean basins or who do not have access to well data turn to published heat flow data as a calibration for basin models. More…
Geomodelling for CCS, a bridge too far?
Traditionally, geomodels are built in a simplistic fashion, taking into account the inherent degree of uncertainty in the input data. Attempting to accurately depict an unseen geological object, often multiple…
Geophysics
The forgotten value of (seismic) tapes
“I’m probably the only tape machine specialist left in northwest Europe”, says Egil Simones from ET Works when we meet at the EAGE Conference in Oslo this week. Egil is…
Did you know that rocks have memory?
The seismic signature of a sedimentary rock is strongly influenced by the geological history of the rock, e.g., the depositional environment, whether it has experienced tectonic burial and uplift, etc.…
Seeing the whole picture
During the pandemic, Lyme Bay Consulting took the opportunity to download all the Operator-released 3D seismic data in the UKCS to produce a series of Post-Stack Merged Seismic Volumes covering…
G&G Community
A tent and a rig
Looking out of the plane window when approaching Dammam, Saudi Arabia’s oil capital, the darkness of the desert is interrupted by star-shaped lights in places. I wondered what they were…
The team at GEO EXPRO wishes you a great New Year, full of energy!
As many people will have headed back to either their (home) office today – brutally ignoring all of those who have continued working on site regardless of whether it is…
A truly global event focused on prospecting, business transactions, and deal-making for the oil and gas E&P sector
A catalyst for deals to be struck and new ventures to be undertaken, BEOS will bring together Oil and Gas Majors, IOCs, NOCs, Independents, E&P firms and Governments, whilst also…
A can-do mentality required
“It’s funny, says Iain Brown, “I had been an avid reader of the magazine for years when I was asked to take over the editor position from Jane Whaley, but…
Portraits
The story behind Mexico’s biggest discovery in decades
What does it take to make the biggest discovery a country has seen in decades? How do you do that as a newcomer? You do that because you see things…
What words mean
Do we both have the same concept in mind when we talk about a 3D model? “No,” says Katya Casey, “surely not.” That notion shaped her career and the style…
When geology just happens, and you happen to be quite good at it
Geology? Going to university? It was not on his mind at all when he finished high school. Yet, he has become a world-renowned expert in petroleum systems and basin modelling,…
Escaping the relentless cycle of re-orgs
“The reactions were overwhelming,” Samuel says at the start of our conversation in October. He alludes to the LinkedIn post he made when he left his role at Shell in…
Company news
Paleogeography and business
“The production of paleogeographic maps is an economically useful exercise for consultancy companies such as ours”, says Andy Horbury from Cambridge Carbonates. His company has been involved in constructing, editing,…
inApril successfully completes first project of the North Sea season
The initial nodes from the company’s rental pool have already seen successful service on one North Sea project and are now being deployed on a second for a different OBN…
Advances in survey design
The traditional model of survey design uses a survey design tool to create geometry which is passed to a different program – often Excel – to estimate cost. Iterating to…
Developments in seismic data processing techniques
Dedicated software programs employ several techniques, including non-linear traveltime tomography, land-specific FWI, bending ray Kirchhoff migration, anisotropic depth imaging, and horizon-consistent velocity modeling, to achieve obtaining accurate earth models. The…
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