Explorer Historical Highlights

The German oil industry did not employ geologists until the 1920s. Instead, they relied on geological surveys and other resources from universities, predominantly from Jakob Stoller of the Prussian Geological Survey. After World War I, with the beginning of private motorization and the interest of the military, demand for oil began to increase. This led to the establishment of a separate department of petroleum geology and the employment of a young geologist, Alfred Bentz, as assistant to Stoller.

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American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

Super basins around the world offer plentiful opportunities for exploration and development, even with the temporarily reduced financial outlook of the oil industry. Ask explorationists to pick a favorite in today’s environment and the popular choice is almost a cheat. The Gulf of Mexico isn’t just a super basin. It’s a huge expanse of prospects and possibilities, of proven resources and potential reserves. An onshore, near-shore, offshore and deepwater exploration province that is really a vast collection of basins and geological features.

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American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

Helium rose back into the news recently, in part because of drilling exploration programs planned for an area along the Alberta-Saskatchewan border in southern Canada. North American Helium Inc. of Calgary announced it had arranged additional equity financing of about $29 million to purchase and construct its second helium purification plant at the Battle Creek field in southwest Saskatchewan and to fund an active drilling program. A number of other companies are reportedly involved in North American helium exploration projects, including Desert Mountain Energy Corp. and Royal Helium Ltd. of Vancouver, Weil Group Resources LLC in Richmond, Va., and Australian explorer Blue Star Energy.

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American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Can predictive data analytics, a cutting-edge tool for exploration, lead to a future boom in new field discoveries and reserve additions? If it does, predictive analytics predicted it.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Director’s Corner

Many of us as petroleum geoscientists, whether recent graduates or experienced professionals, are confronting significant disruption in our chosen profession. The oil and gas business today is, once again, in transition. How do we each individually adapt this to this new reality? It’s by exploring breadth – range – not just the depths of specialization.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Historical Highlights

History is repeating itself today as low oil prices force collaboration between OPEC and non-OPEC producers. An historical analysis of the real global price of oil shows that OPEC will push up prices when the value of oil drops, as in 1995, or work with non-OPEC countries to defend a value floor, as in 1999 and in 2016 until the present. This value floor is defined by times when OPEC advocated abandoning the U.S. dollar as a basis for pricing oil, or when OPEC and non-OPEC countries collaborated.

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American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

In a world that has seen rock-bottom oil prices, a sharp decline in energy demand, constrained funding for oil and gas and a worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, the future for unconventional resources looks – Challenging. Although, not too bad. That might seem counter-intuitive, but many analysts say the outlook for unconventionals remains positive even as the oil industry goes through a period of struggle and woe.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

They might have to invent a new designation for the Anadarko Basin: “super-super basin.” An extraordinarily deep basin, it towers far above the standard definition of a Super Basin – a basin containing multiple reservoirs and source rocks with cumulative production of at least 5 billion barrels of oil equivalent, and future production potential of more than 5 billion boe. The Anadarko has all that and more.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

In July 2019, when the current AAPG Executive Committee took office, they inherited one piece of outstanding business: review the AAPG Climate Statement that had been approved by the previous EC, but also tabled for approval by the incoming EC. Over the last seven months, and long before the two black swan events that are wreaking havoc on our industry and our Association, the EC engaged many of the Association’s stakeholders, including the divisions, the Advisory Council, the Corporate Advisory Board and, by way of a survey, our members.

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American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer ProTracks

At a time when the geoscience job market is suffering from low demand and fewer jobs, the Middle East is hungry for petroleum geoscientists.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)

Hot Items

Explorer Director’s Corner

Perhaps you did a double take pulling the April issue of EXPLORER from the mailbox. What is this? If you joined AAPG in the last 40 years, you’ve only known EXPLORER in its long-standing tabloid format. It worked well for many years as our advertisers – particularly seismic companies – loved the large format and the ability to display their data on a sweeping canvas. For readers, it was a little more awkward.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

A new type of buoyancy model can be used to understand the source of residual oil zones, both thick and thin, to help determine the likelihood that economically viable recoverable oil resides in transition zones of imbibition reservoirs. Application of a buoyancy and breech model will fill a void in reservoir characterization. It will help distinguish between TZs and ROZs, the first of which allows application of primary and secondary (waterflooding) oil recovery methods and the second of which requires more difficult CO2-enhanced oil recovery projects.

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American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Historical Highlights

The Casablanca oil field, discovered in 1975 and located on the Mediterranean shelf edge, has been greatly significant in the world’s offshore oil industry activity, besides being by far the biggest oil field in Spain.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

It isn’t news to anyone that prediction is difficult, especially when it’s the future (as a great man once said). Uncertainty and unpredictability are just a part of the job of tracking and predicting the future supply and demand of energy. That being the case, when energy analysts say that the current level of uncertainty is particularly high, it might be easy to dismiss it as a “dog bites man” story. It isn’t.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Geophysical Corner

Advancements in processing and imaging techniques have continued over the last several decades, which have gradually improved the quality of the processed surface seismic data. When the quality of the existing seismic data is not adequate to perform an interpretation task reasonably, then the interpreter looks for other options. Is it feasible to acquire a new survey? In the absence of an improved survey, will reprocessing of seismic data be a good option?

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American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)

Headquarters Contacts

Susan Nash
Susan Nash Director, Innovation and Emerging Science and Technology, AAPG +1 405 314 7730