Explorer Emphasis Article
By David Brown
Analysts, consultants and government agencies have issued their outlook for oil and gas and the rest of the energy industry for 2024. This time around their confidence level is lower than usual, with significant unknowns in supply, demand and price. Here's what to expect and trends to watch.
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Added on 01 February, 2024
Explorer Director’s Corner
By David Curtiss
Think back to how you first decided to become a geoscientist. Odds are good that it was because of an interaction with someone who you admired and who encouraged you to consider it. That was certainly my experience as a freshman political science major, taking geology to satisfy my general education laboratory science requirement. “What are you going to do with a political science degree?” my professor asked when I finished that first semester. “You should take historical geology next semester.” And that, as they say, was that.
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Added on 01 April, 2023
Explorer Historical Highlights
By Gustavo Coronel
The decade of the 1960s was both hectic and productive in the international petroleum industry. During those years, I worked for three oil and gas companies: Shell; the state-owned Corporacion Venezolana de Petróleo, or CVP; and Philips Petroleum Corporation. The geographical locations were diverse: surface exploration in western Venezuela; the Maracaibo oilfields and Caracas; The Hague, in the Netherlands; Balikpapan, Indonesia; Bartlesville, Okla.; and Lafayette, La. One of my most fruitful experiences took place in Maracaibo, when I had the opportunity to work with a four-man team from the Institut Français du Pétrole, known as IFP – the French Petroleum Institute. They had been sent to Venezuela to conduct regional geological studies in support of the newly created CVP.
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Added on 01 April, 2023
Explorer Geophysical Corner
By Satinder Chopra
In the early days of analogue recording, geophysicists used seismic data primarily to map structure. However, improvements in data quality by the late 1960s led to the identification of lateral changes in amplitude as well. When the drill bit revealed that some of the higher amplitude events correlated to gas-bearing zones, interpreters started taking them seriously. These streaks of high amplitudes seen on seismic sections were christened “bright spots.” The initial excitement was tempered by the realization that not all bright spots correspond to gas.
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Added on 01 April, 2023
Explorer Historical Highlights
By Rasoul Sorkhabi
Working in arduous desert conditions and leading a team of explorers in the 1930s and ‘40s from the company that would come to be Aramco, Max Steineke put Saudi Arabia on the world petroleum map. A definitive, book-length biography of Steineke is yet to be written, but what follows outlines his career and contributions to petroleum geology and exploration during a period and in places far from the comforts, facilities and technologies enjoyed today. And yet, his exploration output from a single basin remains unparalleled, and his story offers valuable insights.
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Added on 01 March, 2023
Explorer Emphasis Article
By David Brown
Energy super basins grabbed the attention of the oil and gas industry during the past five years, with good reason. Now a period of re-evaluation has kicked in. Producers are looking beyond total resource potential to apply other criteria, including economic, environmental and regulatory considerations. Those yardsticks could help identify which basins will dominate energy production in the decades ahead.
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Added on 01 February, 2023
Explorer Article
By David Brown
Large institutions and asset managers are diversifying away from traditional oil and gas projects, sometimes driven by climate concerns, but their investments haven’t fallen far afield. Those organizations think in terms of billions of dollars when evaluating a potential investment sector. And so far, they haven’t hesitated to invest in energy. What has changed, and what keeps changing, is where they put those investment dollars. It’s an energy-investment transition that parallels today’s ongoing energy transition.
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Added on 01 February, 2023
Explorer Emphasis Article
By David Brown
In December 1972, geoscientist Harrison Schmitt traveled more than a quarter-million miles, dropped 8.7 nautical miles out of lunar orbit and took a stroll on the moon. That was 50 years ago, and today, with Artemis, NASA envisions a multistage program to return humans to the moon and eventually create a sustainable manned lunar habitat. In Greek mythology, Artemis was a moon goddess and twin sister of Apollo. The Artemis I Space Launch System rocket launched on Nov. 16.
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Added on 01 December, 2022
Explorer Geophysical Corner
By Heather Bedle,Kurt Marfurt,Ritesh Sharma,Satinder Chopra,Sumit Verma
Deepwater turbidite reservoirs hold some of the largest petroleum reservoirs and thus are important exploration targets. By identifying and mapping the diverse architectural elements of the turbidite system and placing them within the correct geologic framework, a skilled interpreter can predict which components of the system are more likely sand or shale prone. Seismic data and seismic attributes also provide insight into the connectivity or compartmentalization of different parts of the reservoir which can be used to estimate the number of wells needed to drain the reservoir.
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Added on 01 October, 2022
Explorer Article
By David Brown
This debate began decades ago: How much of the planet's natural gas is abiotic – made up of methane with nonbiological origins? At times, the scientific back-and-forth argument has resembled a slow-motion tennis match, with a new volley coming every few years. Now, Daniel Xia thinks he has helped deliver a winning smash across the net. His findings were most clearly laid out in a recent article “Validity of geochemical signatures of abiotic hydrocarbon gases on Earth,” by Xia and coauthor Yongli Gao, published in the Journal of the Geological Society.
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Added on 01 October, 2022