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…
Worldwide
Are sea cucumbers in a pickle?
In March this year, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) member states met and negotiated over two weeks in Kingston, Jamaica, to discuss the future of seabed mining. But yet again,…
Who retires first – me or the field I’m working on?
Full disclosure: the thoughts put down in this article are all my own. I have not performed any interviews for this piece, and draw purely on observations made over the…
It doesn’t need to be clay mineral diagenesis
Last year, we published an article about the presence of freshwater signals in deep-marine sandstones. It was an observation made by an explorer in the Pomboo well drilled in deepwater…
Collaborative solutions to above-ground exploration challenges
EnerGeo Alliance programs are structured, collaborative initiatives designed to address non-competitive challenges facing the energy geoscience and exploration industry. These challenges span regulation, environmental stewardship, operational efficiency, and data integrity…
Recognising structural inversion
In structural geology, inversion describes a situation where a fault or structure is reactivated with the opposite sense of movement from its original displacement. The most common type is positive…
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…
Venezuela, Greenland, Iran and oil
Javier Blas wrote in a recent post that “the US shale revolution hands the US a much stronger hand in controlling prices.” That’s why he suggested that the oil price…
Hunting for sands
If a school bus driver is instructed to stop the vehicle within a fraction of a meter, there needs to be systematic speed and brake control in place. Otherwise, the…
When the lithium cycle bites back
Commodity cycles rarely announce their turning points. They emerge quietly, through inventory data, project pipelines, and subtle shifts in physical markets – long before consensus catches up. The lithium price…
Geomechanical models – not a luxury but a risk management tool
After over a hundred years of research and development, geomechanics modeling is not just a nice-to-have accessory in a drilling campaign, but it is one of the main pillars to…
“In one year, we lost two years”
“Last year was not a very good one,” Habib admits when we meet on Teams. “Everybody expected that 2025 would be a turning point in the market, with many projects…