The exploration legacy of Bernard Looney
In a speech delivered to people at Stanford University in March 2002, then bp chief executive Lord John Browne declared that his company needed to reinvent the energy business. “We…
Worldwide
Your “catch of the day” causes plumes and marine devastation at a much larger scale than any deep-sea mining activity will cause anytime soon
In the fourteenth century, British fishermen from Essex sent a petition to King Edward III from England. They wanted him to ban a new type of fishing gear that some…
Is Multi-Point Statistics the future of reservoir modelling?
In our quest to build more realistic reservoir models, we stumble upon the challenge of how to fill up the blanks between well data. Many robust algorithms are widely used…
Finding oil in synclines
This week, I came across the concept of finding oil in synclines on a number of unrelated occasions. It simply shows how diverse geology and exploration are. The first example…
The little big number
“Levelized cost of energy” (LCOE) measures an energy source’s lifetime costs divided by energy output and is a metric often used for comparing the competitiveness of different energy forms to…
Drilling deeper than the primary target – the next frontier?
The idea for this story was born when I saw a LinkedIn post from Mike Smith in the USA in which he wrote about a well in the Gulf of…
Strike-slip kinematics for pop-ups and pull-aparts
Pop-ups and pull-aparts, releasing- and restraining-bends, positive- and negative-flower structures. These are the various names given to the little, and big, structures that develop along strike-slip faults. They often form…
Applications of Computational Fluid Dynamics in Carbon Capture and Storage Well Design
CFD is used to model the leak rate of CO₂ through abandoned wells and to verify that the leak rates are As Low As Reasonably Possible. The risk of loss…
A 100% success rate
A little bit of humour is a very effective way to dress up a conversation, and VP Exploration at Petronas Mohd Redhani did just that during today’s opening session at…
Is carbon capture and storage really a fantasy?
In July, the Pulitzer Center published an article entitled “Documents, Whistleblowers, and Public Comments Are Clear: Oil Companies Know Carbon Capture Is Not a Climate Solution”. The authors state that…
Digitisation before digitalisation
When a country where some previous exploration efforts took place decides to run another licensing round in an attempt to attract interest from the global exploration community, legacy data quickly…
Uncertainty – the most important result of basin modelling
I have long wanted to write about uncertainties in basin modelling. Despite their general acknowledgement, they are commonly underestimated due to various biases and psychological pressures. Explorationists sometimes live in…