The year started with a flurry of news in which the subsurface played a prominent role. Greenland had been simmering for a while, but the lifting of Maduro from Venezuela came as a huge surprise to many. Immediately, questions around the rebuilding of oil infrastructure started circulating, which has been ongoing until today.
Instead of putting in our two cents, we look back at the Apertura, the last time Venezuela opened its doors to foreign oil companies.
One of them was bp, and we tell the story of how they redeveloped Pedernales in the Orinoco delta. Not because it is THE example, but because it is AN example of how things can pan out. We talked to both local people and expats who worked on Pedernales and shared their fascinating stories.
And that is not the only Venezuela-themed article in this issue of the magazine. We also talked to two former PDVSA employees who lost their jobs in the early 2000’s shortly after Chavez took to power and fired almost 20,000 PDVSA employees who had joined a strike against the regime. Even though it is more than 20 years ago, people are still concerned about repercussions, which is why we spoke to them anonymously.
Apart from the two articles on Venezuela, this issue is packed with content from all over the world, as always, and reports on behind-the-scenes developments in addition to insights from a wide range of contributors.
FIRSTS
8 – Subsurface noise
10 – Energy matters – by Rodney Garrard
11 – Regional update – by Ian Cross
12 – Striking gas – A big new discovery or a confirmation of what was already known
INSIGHTS
86 – A Geologist Ruins Everything – Love and sex and oil and passion – by Juan Cottier
87 – Reservoir models – Producing more by producing less
88 – HotSpot – What is the driver for drilling two costly exploration wells offshore Bulgaria? – by NVentures
90 – Use your brines – When the lithium cycle bites back – by István Nagy-Korodi
91 – Petroleum Systems –How to generate an oil accumulation in a gas-prone petroleum system? – by Lukasz Krawczynski and Martin Neumaier
92 – Recognising structural inversion – by Molly Turko
98 – Greenland’s unconformity – by Ian Sharp and Steven Andrews
100 – Vertical Geology – Not too many, not too few – by Henk Kombrink and Marcos Asensio
COVER STORY
14 – Grand plans, challenging geology
EXPLORATION OPPORTUNITIES
20 – Inside every Basin you know is another Basin you haven’t met – Searcher
48 – Moroccan Atlantic Margin: Where geological diversity meets outstanding exploration potential – ONHYM
76 – Most subsurface teams aren’t making the most of their data – Earth Science Analytics
OIL & GAS
26 – It doesn’t need to be clay mineral diagenesis
27 – An impression of the state of the industry in Russia
28 – A key testing ground for exploration strategies – by Jamie McGreevy
29 – How Bolivia’s search for additional petroleum resources relates to Devonian paleogeography and paleolatitude
30 – The Gambia’s offshore acreage is hot again
31 – Why post well analysis matters
32 – One block, one basin – Andy Racey and Andy Taylor
33 – A new frontier for Nigeria’s stranded associated gas – Chimezie Uduba, Barikorndum Needam, Adedotun Olalere, Chinweike Okeke, Temim Yusuf, Rasak Sunmonu, Kazeem A. Lawal and Segun Owolabi
FEATURES
36 – Unlocking the deep offshore potential of the Mahanadi Basin – Srinivasan Krishnan, Michael Castele, and David Hume, University of Houston / DGH Collaboration
39 – Offshore Algarve Basin geological carbon storage potential – Tiago Cunha, Igi, Hugo Matias, Net4CO2, Martin Neumaier and Nicky Tessen, Arianelogix
42 – Hunting for sands
45 – Before the collapse in oil production, Venezuela saw another collapse – the mass firing of most of PDVSA’s technical staff
PORTRAITS
54 – What words mean
GEOTHERMAL ENERGY
60 – A very expensive fart in the wind
61 – From the shores of Lake Geneva to NEOM in Saudi
62 – If plans come to fruition, the Aarhus geothermal project in Denmark may almost deliver what was promised
SUBSURFACE STORAGE
64 – Silver out, air in
65 – How can we monitor North Sea carbon stores under wind farms and production platforms? – Nigel Platt, Sam Head and John Underhill
66 – “In one year, we lost two years”
DEEP SEA MINERALS
68 – First seabed copper from Norway – by Ronny Setså
69 – Norway stumbles at the finish line – by Ronny Setså
70 – First commercial recovery permit for seabed mining on the horizon
NEW GAS
72 – Omani research well burping hydrogen
73 – Canada’s first hydrogen exploration well
74 – Finding hydrogen is not the problem; producing it is…
TECHNOLOGY
82 – When the reliability of your project depends on a single tool at hundreds of meters depth
83 – Norway’s AlphaGo moment: Why 2025 changed the game – by Dan Austin
84 – “It will make you look like a hero”
