This Month's Explorer Articles

Calculating a reliable per-well estimate of reserves and future production matters more than ever, especially in unconventional resources. And especially with today’s uncertain economics. Good geodata is essential. But how much data is enough? Research suggests that machine learning not only provides an advantage over traditional decline curve analysis, but also reduces the amount of current production data needed for a clear outlook. And the use of computer models can open a window for applying geological knowledge toward a better understanding of ultimate production and reserves.

Meeting sustainable development and energy transition goals set by North American and European countries can be a challenge for developing nations who are working to build their economies and meet energy demand, and who often have very different carbon footprints than those who set the standards. Such is the case for Brazil, the largest economy in South America, and the fifth largest country in the world. Home to a growing population, massive pre-salt reservoirs and the Amazon rainforest, Brazil is an ideal setting for addressing the dual priorities of developing a healthy energy sector while protecting the environment.

Geothermal energy beneath the Earth’s surface, literally below our feet, has enough potential to meet the demand for sustainable zero-carbon electricity in the coming decades and beyond. How much energy is down there and for how long? According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E geothermal project, AltaRock Energy, a mere 0.1 percent of the heat content of Earth could supply humanity’s total energy needs for 2 million years.  It seems, then, like a good idea to go get it. The question is: what’s the most efficient way to do so? Recently, a geothermal research team at the University of Oklahoma believes they found an answer. It’s called SoonerDrill.

The AAPG Gulf Coast Section GeoGulf Conference was held April 23-25 and featured robust attendance of more than 400 geoscientists, filling the Houston Norris City Conference Center. The GeoGulf conference rotates among city locations and this year, the host society was the 100-year-old Houston Geological Society. GeoGulf23 topical themes included: the onshore Mesozoic and Tertiary plays, offshore U.S. Gulf Coast, onshore and offshore Mexico and the newly discovered exploration oil and gas potential of Guyana, South America.

The AAPG Astrogeology Committee led a field trip to NASA Space Center Houston as a part of the GeoGulf 2023 conference. The trip featured astronaut-geologists Harrison “Jack” Schmitt of the Apollo 17 mission and Jessica Watkins of the Artemis team. Activities on the field trip included visits to historic Apollo Mission Control, the Saturn V rocket, the Apollo 17 Command Module capsule, the Lunar Sample Lab and a luncheon presentation by Schmitt.

Pockmarks are prominent features seen on seafloors worldwide in different depositional environments, including continental shelves, slopes and ocean basins. Early observations of methane gas bubbles and oil slicks on the surface of the sea led people to believe that seepage of hydrocarbons from the seafloor was taking place. Later, continuous profiling with high-resolution seismic reflection systems and side-scan sonars in hydrocarbon development areas showed the pockmarks to be indeed associated with hydrocarbon seepages.

Greater Los Angeles, Calif., holds the world’s largest urban oil fields, including some of the most productive fields in the United States, within one of the world’s richest oil-producing basins. In 1892, what had been a small agricultural village became a boomtown nearly overnight when oil was first discovered by sinking a well with a pick and a shovel. Since then, many more oil discoveries were made and the city grew up alongside the oil industry, embedding it into the urban environment. This is the story of a family and the giant oil field discoveries made during the 1920s and ‘30s in the Rancho San Pedro, now part of Greater Los Angeles.

It's been an exciting year at the Division of Environmental Geology. Carbon capture, utilization and storage, along with the problems and opportunities presented by orphan wells have both been hot topics in the industry and so have been and will continue to be the focus of the DEG. When I began my term a year ago, our goal was to increase the visibility of the Division in the areas of CCUS, as well as natural gas storage, hydrogen storage, compressed air energy storage and geothermal storage.

As faculty, we are often questioned by graduate students interested in a career in research as to whether they should choose industry or academia. Both of us recently read a book on the Bell Labs Research Center written in 2012 by Jon Gertner. It made us recall many of our similar experiences we enjoyed while working at Amoco’s Tulsa Research Center. We asked each other if we knew of others who spent half their career in industry research and half in academia. We could think of few – which, we decided, made us uniquely qualified to compare the two career paths.