Issue 6

Vol. 10

This edition of GEO ExPro Magazine focuses on North West Europe and New Technologies

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Columns

5 Editorial

6 Update

12 Licensing Opportunities

14 Market Update

16 A Minute to Read

30 Recent Advances in Technology: Towards a Ghost-Free Solution

42 GEO ExPro Profile: Derek Fairhead – Mapping Out a Career

54 Giant Fields: Wytch Farm Ploughs Ahead

80 GEO Tourism: The Salt Mountain, Romania

86 History of Oil: Unlocking the Earth

92 GEO Cities: Aberdeen – The Granite City

94 Exploration Update

96 GEO Media: Wegener’s Jigsaw

98 Q&A

100 Hot Spot: Cooper Basin, Australia

102 Global Resource Management

Features

20 Cover story: Norway – Small is Also Beautiful

26 Technology: Solutions for Monitoring Gas

36 Seismic Foldout: Croatia: A New Oil Province

46 Exploration: Oil and Gas Potential of Greece

50 Technology: Pressure Prediction in Exhumed Basins

58 Exploration: Exploration Trends on the UKCS

62 Technology: Using Gravity for Enhanced Recovery

66 Reservoir Management: Applying Analogues for Success

70 Technology: The Digital Oilfield

74 Seismic Foldout: Sub-Salt Plays, Ultra-Deep Water Kwanza Basin

Articles

Broadband seismic technology and beyond – PART VI: Towards a ghost-free solution

Part VI: Towards a ghost-free solution “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” – Thomas Edison Read More

The Azolla Biosystem

The past 2004 was a landmark year in our understanding of past climate change. Reduced ice cover allowed the Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX) drillship Vidar Viking to core a deep Read More

Oil in demand

Worldwide consumption of petroleum and other liquid fuels will increase from today’s 87 MMbpd to 115 MMbpd in 2040, driven by rapid economic development in the emerging economies of the Read More

Mapping out a career

First fired-up by an ‘old boy’ talk at his grammar school – in the post-colonial, pre-OPEC days of the early 1960s – Derek eagerly signed up for a career in Read More

Angola, Kwanza Basin: Sub-salt plays of the ultra-deep water

Exploring further and deeper Acquisition of marine seismic data using CGG’s broadband solution BroadSeis™, has greatly improved the imaging and interpretation of subsurface oil and gas reservoirs. Pre-salt reservoir targets Read More

Licence opportunities that could shape 2014.

Egypt According to an official source from the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC), the company will invite the first tender for tight oil exploration in the country early in 2014. Read More

Aberdeen: The granite city

Aberdeen (‘the mouth of the Dee’ in Scots Gaelic) is the third most populous city in Scotland, and lies in the north-east of the country. It is an old city Read More

Into his mind: Wegener’s Jigsaw

Dr. Alfred Wegener made his first expedition to Greenland in 1906 to study polar air circulation. Upon his return, he accepts a position as tutor at the University of Marburg. Read More

A fresh look at the oil and gas potential of Greece

Greece is preparing for a new offshore licence round. The nearby Italian and Albanian discoveries and fields may be valid analogues since they share much of their geological history with Read More

Wytch Farm ploughs ahead

Discovered in 1973, the Wytch Farm development has a long history of safe and successful production and has been the site of many landmark technical firsts and records for the Read More

Unlocking the earth – a short history of hydraulic fracturing

Fracking has come a long way since 1857 when Preston Barmore lowered gunpowder into a well at Canadaway Creek, NY, and dropped a red-hot iron down a tube, resulting in Read More

Small is also beautiful

Some spectacular discoveries have been made on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS) in the last three years. Avaldsnes and Aldous, later proven to be one single accumulation and renamed Johan Read More

Pressure prediction in exhumed basins

The dominance of gas over oil in the Norwegian Barents Sea has been one of the major factors in slowing the development of the region. The lack of oil has Read More

The salt mountain

Slanic Prahova, lies in the forested hills of the Sub-Carpathians, at an altitude of 413m and approximately 100 km north of Bucharest. Slanic is an all-season spa resort, which prides Read More

Solutions for monitoring gas

In the past few months, a great deal of publicity has been given to the issue of the production of shale gas. In North America, the increase in gas production Read More

Exploration trends on the UKCS

Forty-eight years (and over 3,000 exploration wells) on from the first commercial discovery at West Sole, much of the United Kingdom continental shelf has long been considered a mature exploration Read More

Just how good are we at the digital oilfield?

Do these phrases mean the same thing to everyone, or have we created standards of working that only really work in our own discipline or company? How transferable are the Read More

If Iran strikes a deal…?

After years of frustration and stalemate in the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme between Iran and the six world powers (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Read More

Imperial College petroleum geology course centenary

Tell us about the history of the Imperial College petroleum geology course Petroleum geology began at Imperial College (IC) in a small way with a course of lectures in 1911. Read More

Australia’s new oil heavyweight

Oil production from this arid and remote region 800 km north of Adelaide has jumped by 47% over the past three years to almost 10 MMb, based on data produced Read More

A minute to read

Paradise arrives Geophysical Insights, the Houston-based geosciences company, chose SEG 2013 in September to announce the commercial launch of Paradise™, a geosciences analytic software platform. Paradise executes and manages workflows based Read More

The global energy sector from a subsurface perspective