Subsurface noise #11

IT’S NOT ALWAYS A MATTER OF VISION
Sometimes it is worth flicking through the notebooks that I keep in my drawer. A few years ago, after interviewing someone about exploration drilling in Libya, I wrote down how the company Lasmo, after making the Elephant discovery in the Murzuk Basin in southern Libya, immediately became a takeover target. It was ENI that ultimately bought the company. With that takeover also came Lasmo’s other assets, and one of those was acreage in the Kutei Basin in Indonesia, in which ENI recently made another sizeable discovery – Geliga. That is obviously all to be credited to ENI, but it is interesting to be reminded that getting the acreage in the first place was not a matter of deep study at all, as it was the Libyan asset that drove the purchase.

CONFIDENCE AND OIL

I was recently told the story of how Cairn discovered gas in Bangladesh initially, followed by the hugely successful campaign in India that resulted in the discovery of a large oil field in an area that had been given up by Shell not long before. As such, the owners of the company at the time became convinced that they could find commercial hydrocarbons anywhere. That is the backdrop against which the company embarked on the famous offshore Greenland drilling programme that took nine wells and cost a fortune. However, as may not be entirely unexpected, Cairn was not lucky the third time – a clear example of how confidence can turn into overconfidence.

RELATIONSHIPS AND AI

During a fireside chat at a recent conference in London, Katherine Roe, CEO of Pharos Energy, said that the oil business is a relationship-building business. I think I agree with that. In my experience, cold-calling is always much harder than being introduced by a common friend. It is ten times easier. It also makes me wonder how AI can play a role in facilitating this. So far, I have concluded that there is not too much of a role for AI here. At the end of the day, getting things done still involves human interaction. Let it stay that way. In the meantime, Pharos Energy has been acquired by the Israeli company Ratio Petroleum.

NO DRY WELLS ALLOWED
At a conference, I met a geologist who works for a mid-sized company. He told me that the owner of the explorer does not tolerate drilling dry wells. And this attitude causes a culture in which people can not criticise any plans because of the risk of going against the grain. The result is that exploration managers lose their jobs straight after a dry well has been completed. Wow.