As so much in the oil and gas industry relies on expert interpretation over unstructured data and understanding of elaborate geological concepts, tracking the production and consumption of conceptual knowledge and information is crucial. Systems need to be developed that can capture these interpretative trails in order to meet the needs of exploration. IBM’s Hyperknowledge Trails may just be that system.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way students and professionals live, work and study. With less time spent socializing and commuting, geoscientists in industry and academia are taking advantage of the time to connect to webinars that enable them to improve their technical skills from the comfort of their own home. These new habits have provided an opportunity for the Visiting Geoscientist Program, an initiative that traditionally features in-person talks delivered by professionals visiting university campuses. Faced with public health concerns, travel restrictions and university closures related to COVID-19, the AAPG Global Visiting Geoscientist Committee made the decision to suspend all in-person visits until further notice. Stopping in-person visits led to a new start for visiting geoscientists and students in AAPG’s Latin America and Caribbean Region.
The twin crises of COVID-19 and falling oil prices have left the world spinning and schools, companies and professional associations searching for ways to adapt. For the AAPG Latin America and Caribbean Region leadership team, the new reality has led to innovation and creativity.
It all started in 2002, when Unocal revealed that its Trident-1 well had found 400 meters of 70-percent net Lower Wilcox Formation sand in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, about 400 kilometers beyond the contemporaneous shelf break offshore south Texas. Art Berman and I gazed at a GOM activity map and pondered how that amount of sand could have been deposited so far out into the basin. Our working hypothesis was that this sand deposit was due to a drop in base level, but we also knew that the worldwide sea level was not in decline at that time. A log of the nearby Shell Great White well shows that this sand deposition began suddenly and ended suddenly. This was also puzzling, since we were trained to expect gradational coarsening-upward bedding during regression and fining-upward during transgression, rather than the sharp contacts we were seeing. Sudden avulsion of a major river in a deltaic environment could produce something like this, but how could it happen far beyond the shelf edge?
On Feb. 11, Colombia’s state oil company Ecopetrol signed a joint venture with Royal Dutch Shell granting the company 50-percent working interest in the Fuerte Sur, Purple Angel and Colombia-5 blocks located in the Southern Colombian Caribbean. Shell is not the only company taking note of Colombia’s offshore potential. Noble Energy entered the country in 2018 and obtained its first acreage position with a 40-percent operational stake in the COL-3 and GUA OFF-3 blocks in March 2019. Ian Gordon, Colombia country manager for Noble, said the country has a lot to offer to companies seeking offshore opportunities.
The tectonic-stratigraphic evolution of the deep-water Mundaú subbasin, Brazilian equatorial margin, is investigated, focusing on the geometries and nature of faults as well as on structural and sedimentary restorations. The Paracuru Formation is both the main source and reservoir.
This Executive Committee and the past five EC have been working hard on your behalf. AAPG had a couple black swan events in 2014 and 2015. The Executive Committees during these few years have been working very hard to cut costs and bring the budget into balance in this new commodity price environment. The bottom line to all this is that in five years we have righted the ship, bailed the water, and are sailing once again.
Carolina Garcia and Diana Ruiz
Students and young professionals in the LACR to submit proposals that focus on Sustainable Development projects in the energy field.
I encourage all of our more senior members to help out the next generation of geologists. Remembering back to when we all started our careers, most of us were fortunate that someone took an interest in us and acted as a mentor. Look around and find a YP that you might be able to help to navigate their early career path.
What’s in a name? Should we call it a transition? A convergence? A transformation? A revolution? A tipping-point? A paradigm shift? Consider that perhaps the name is largely irrelevant, except to sell conference tickets. There’s a radical shift afoot that affects the business model for global energy delivery and consumption. And with it comes with a wealth of opportunities for energy geoscientists, as well as an obligation for every professional society to help its members prepare for the future.
A collection of both qualitative and quantitative data on deep-water outcrops from around the world, this volume contains 154 chapters, and includes papers on all seven continents and 21 countries. Product #736. Price: Member $189/List $239.
This Memoir is critical for exploration geoscientists in the petroleum industry, research institutions, and academia in order to understand the diverse petroleum systems, the tectonic and geologic evolution of sedimentary basins, and the development of hydrocarbon fields in these regions of South America. Product #1303. Price: Member $131 / List $262.
This volume expands and improves the AAPG 1978 classic, A Color Illustrated Guide to Carbonate Rock Constituents, Textures, Cements, and Porosities (AAPG Memoir 27). Product #649. SALE Price $24 (Regularly priced: Member $48 / List $68)
This 18-chapter volume is small enough to focus on the interplay among tectonics, sedimentation, and petroleum systems. Yet it is big enough to cover the diversity of structural styles in important petroliferous sedimentary basins around the globe. Product #1174. Price: Member $174 / List $174.