North America

USA looking to join the race

The Metals Company may be the first company – commercial or state-owned – in the world to start full-scale deepsea mining. That makes their quarterly and annual reports a well-worth…

Riedel shears as kinematic indicators

In the previous article in this series, we discussed that Riedel shears are commonly the first set of subsidiary faults we see prior to the breakthrough of a master fault.…

Nodules may indeed be “battery rocks”

Nodules were originally termed “a battery in a rock” by The Metals Company (TMC) to convey to the public the need for deep sea minerals for the green shift. Polymetallic…

Titanic effort in ultra deep waters off Newfoundland

ExxonMobil, with partner QatarEnergy, is drilling the Persephone (C-54) wildcat offshore Canada’s Labrador and Newfoundland coast. This new frontier wildcat is testing a number of conventional clastic reservoirs in rifted…

Riedel shears, my favorite kinematic indicator

Riedel shears are commonly the first set of subsidiary faults we see prior to the breakthrough of a master fault. They form systematically at an acute angle (~10-20°) to the…

Don’t forget to look deeper

As oil and gas geoscientists, we often focus on the reservoir we are targeting. Seldom do we consider what might be happening deeper, especially in basement rocks. However, what happens…