Explorer Policy Watch

Basic research – the source of innovative technology – has experienced significant cuts in the past three years as the House and Senate have disagreed on spending proprieties and “sequestration” has become the default budget process.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

The 16 speakers are selected and the technical program is in place for the next Playmaker Forum, a one-day event designed to help empower geologists to have exploration and business success.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

BP's interest in the Gulf of Mexico remains strong. An expected average of US$4 billion each year for the next 10 years is expected to be invested.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

Edinburgh, Scotland, has a new research center planning to open its doors in 2015. It is the Sir Charles Lyell Centre, named after Britain's 19th century geologist. The uptick of interest in emerging industries of shale oil and gas and deep sea metal mining is just one of the areas of the focus planned for the centre.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Policy Watch

Over the past two years large variations in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates of the volume of methane released during natural gas production have been used by organizations arguing respectively that natural gas is cleaner than or dirtier than coal.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Division Column EMD

A recent story about Shell’s withdrawal from a long-lived project on in situ production of shale oil from oil shale was an interesting example of over-interpretation of a small dataset.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Policy Watch

As shale gas development has boomed over the past decade and public concern about its safety has swelled, both regulatory agencies and operating companies have accelerated their efforts to improve environmental safety.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Division Column DPA

Our principal goal for the DPA is to increase our relevance to our members – and by extension to our AAPG community, which in turn ought to make the Division attractive to new members.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Wil who? Don’t look now, but the Wilcox Trend is making a name for itself – thanks to high oil prices and technology applications, such as hydraulic fracturing.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

The ultra-deepwater Alaminos Canyon area proved to be a valuable lease purchase in the recent Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale.

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 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

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 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