Middle East Archives

Middle East

Wadi Nukhul – a glimpse of the Red Sea-Gulf of Suez rift system

During the Oligocene and Miocene, a 2,000 km long zone of extension developed that formed the Red Sea-Gulf of Suez rift system. In this outcrop photo, we are looking south in the Wadi Nukhul region on the east coast of…

Ian Sharp, Equinor

July 13, 2026

New oil in an old field

Whilst attending a webinar the other day, Andrew Latham from WoodMac presented an overview of the largest discoveries of 2025. The number one discovery, with an estimated volume of 2 billion barrels, turned out to be the East Baghdad find…

Henk Kombrink

May 29, 2026

The frontier well that hit the jackpot in Iraq – at a critical moment in time

As widely reported by media today, ZhenHua Oil – under the local subsidiary name Qurnain Petroleum Limited – has discovered what it claims to be an oil field of more than 8 billion barrels in reserves. The location of the…

Henk Kombrink

May 7, 2026

Omani research well burping hydrogen

Professor Alexis Templeton in conversation at the 2025 H-NAT Summit. Photo: H-NAT Summit. When Professor Alexis Templeton from the University of Colorado conducted a techno-economic analysis on stimulated hydrogen, the results suggested that generating profitable volumes of gas is nearly…

Mariël Reitsma

April 17, 2026

Not too many, not too few

The Shewashan oil field is located in one of the world’s most famous petroleum provinces – the Zagros fold and thrust belt – not far from the major Kirkuk field. Here, we show a bit of core from the Shewashan-4B…

Henk Kombrink and Marcos Asensio

April 10, 2026

Time to recycle party balloons

A third of the world’s helium comes from Qatar, a lucrative by-product of natural gas production. Even though the North Field contains only 0.04 % helium, the vast volumes of hydrocarbon production result in Qatar being the second largest helium…

Mariël Reitsma

April 8, 2026

An unconventional unconventional gas project

When I visited the MEOS GEO Conference in Bahrain last in 2025 and spoke to some people about projects currently ongoing in the region, it slowly dawned on me that there was one project that had escaped my attention. One…

Henk Kombrink

February 10, 2026

The Grand Canyon of the Middle East

The outcrop photo shows what is commonly known as the Grand Canyon of the Middle East: Wadi Ghul and Wadi Nakr in the Jebel Shams Massif in northern Oman. From base to top, the rock record tells the Mesozoic story…

Photo and text: Joe Versfelt, V-Global Exploration Consulting

December 29, 2025

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 data, no recent wells, and almost zero data available from…

Graham Banks, Route to Reserves Consulting

October 13, 2025

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 is also successful in doing so. Fourteen new finds were…

Henk Kombrink

June 18, 2025

Not-so-hot volcanic rocks in Saudi Arabia

This in what a team of researchers concluded in a paper published in the journal Geothermics this year. It must have been a bit of a surprise to find very modest heat flows and no sign of an active geothermal…

Henk Kombrink

April 16, 2025

Oil in porous intrusive rocks

Basement plays are found in quite a few areas globally and have been well studied and reported on. Norway, Yemen, Vietnam and China are amongst those places where oil is being produced from granites buried beneath source and overburden rocks.…

John Smewing

March 10, 2025

The global energy sector from a subsurface perspective

Middle East

Wadi Nukhul – a glimpse of the Red Sea-Gulf of Suez rift system

New oil in an old field

The frontier well that hit the jackpot in Iraq – at a critical moment in time

Omani research well burping hydrogen

Not too many, not too few

Time to recycle party balloons

An unconventional unconventional gas project

The Grand Canyon of the Middle East

Why target the surface synclines in the flat foreland of a fold-and-thrust belt?

Steadily, Saudi Arabia keeps finding more hydrocarbons

Not-so-hot volcanic rocks in Saudi Arabia

Oil in porous intrusive rocks

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