The World Could Soon See a Massive Oil Glut. Here's Why - 13 June, 2024 07:30 AM
How Russian Oil Is Adding Fuel to Geopolitical Fragmentation - 13 June, 2024 07:30 AM
New Mexico Lawmakers Frustrated as They Debate Oil and Gas Setbacks - 13 June, 2024 07:30 AM
Senegal Starts Producing Oil as President Promises Benefits - 13 June, 2024 07:30 AM
Potential Oil Discovery Offshore South Korea Spurs Hope Despite Past Exploration Challenges - 13 June, 2024 07:30 AM
Researchers generally say they are scrambling to keep up with the changing needs of the oil industry combined with the emerging, broader concerns of society. Amazingly, technology research for oil and gas continues to flourish even now, despite some recent problematic headwinds. And even though computing-related technology gets most of the attention these days, today’s energy research extends far beyond Big Data and its applications.
As companies work toward developing alternative sources for a world with ever-increasing energy demands, energy minerals are moving to the forefront of the conversation. AAPG’s Energy Minerals Division finds itself in the spotlight these days for its work in prospecting alternative energy sources, such as geothermal and hydrates, for commercial use. “We’ve got good momentum right now with interest in alternative energy,” said Ursula Hammes, AAPG Member, EMD president and president at Hammes Energy and Consultants.
Understanding the role and influence of salt in the subsurface has been the key to many hydrocarbon discoveries and appraisals and more recently carbon & hydrogen capture and storage, and geothermal interests. Now, AAPG has a new Technical Interest Group, co-founded and co-chaired by Clara Abu (Ph.D Candidate Imperial College), Rachelle Kernen Ph.D., Leonardo Muniz Pichel Ph.D., Clara Rodriguez Ph.D., and Tim Shin, MSc. Welcome to an interview with one of the co-founders, Clara Abu.
“Machine learning” has become a common phrase in geophysics. These methods, based on complex algorithms and statistics, allow geoscientists to speed up and improve their interpretations. However, as interpreters, we can feel intimidated and concerned about how much of our expertise can be replaced by machine learning algorithms. To better understand the limitations, we assess the importance of human validation and participation in one machine learning process, highlighting the upsides and downsides of a machine-derived process versus a geoscientist-guided selection of attributes. As Earth scientists, we explored a suite of seismic attributes and selected those that were meaningful for interpreting a deepwater channel system and compared our results with the attributes derived from principal component analysis.
In the business of oil and gas exploration, it’s all about managing risk. Companies are more likely to drill where there are strong indications of hydrocarbons from field and seismic data, nearby wells and discoveries – and preferably, all of the above. So, when the federal government officially opens the doors in the near future to the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for commercial drilling, it could be like watching a game of poker.
Fault seal potential is an essential step in determining the potential for fluid migration and assessing risks during hydrocarbon exploration. Multiple assessment tools have been developed and focus on (1) lithological juxtaposition, of permeable and impermeable stratigraphic units, and (2) fault rock sealing, assuming that clay material gets smeared along a fault zone. Most of these tools rely heavily on well log data, whether it is collected and analyzed in 1-D or 3-D settings.
The North Sea Rift Basin ranks as one of the world’s most famous and indefatigable super basin areas. Like a pugnacious prize fighter, it’s been counted out again and again, only to rebound and punch back into contention. While some explorers consider the North Sea province highly mature, and even late life, it continues to produce plenty of oil and gas. And discoveries.
“One of the drives I always had has been to explore beyond the visible horizon.” Those are the sentiments from this year’s Robert R. Berg Outstanding Research Award winner, Daniele Colombo, senior geophysical consultant for Aramco in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
Since the 1968 discovery of Prudhoe Bay, North America’s largest conventional oilfield, operators have been drawn to Alaska’s remote and mysterious North Slope in search of other giants. The discovery of the Alpine Field in 1994 fueled interest in stratigraphic traps, and the region continues to yield significant discoveries, such as the 2013 Pikka Field, just east of the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska. Considering all the territory that stretches north of the Brooks Range, one area –the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge – has remained off-limits to exploration since its creation in the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Despite decades of heated debate between the industry and environmentalists on whether to allow exploration of the area – which is widely believed to be rich in hydrocarbons and a major step toward energy independence – it has remained closed. Until now.
The future of geophysics could reside in the clouds. Or, well, the cloud, to be exact. Service companies and geophysical technology providers have signed multiple agreements with data firms in 2020, paving the way for enhanced data applications, faster data access and improved operations. Potential benefits range from advanced, real-time reservoir monitoring to better control and coordination of downhole geophysical tools. And the key is the cloud.
In the past 3 decades the sequence stratigraphy jargon has proliferated, resulting in multiple definitions of the same surface or new surfaces and units based on drawings of deposition in response to relative changes in sea level. The close association between base-level changes, the formation of surfaces, and specific stratal stacking that define systems tracts are at the heart of the confusion. This webinar is proposed a back-to-basics approach, emphasizing key observations that can be made from any geologic data: lithofacies, lithofacies association, vertical stacking, stratal geometries, and stratal terminations.
The goal of this e-symposium is to review the status of the Mexican upstream sector, and to provide a review of the most prolific and prospective areas in Mexico, with a focus on opportunities for international participation, given the upcoming energy reform in Mexico.
Both climate change and the most recent coronavirus pandemic have generated multiple impacts on society. Though on the surface the crises appear to be unrelated, they have more similarities than differences. The common elements shared by Covid-19 and climate change promote the development of comprehensive solutions that mitigate both crises simultaneously. This talk examines how actions and strategies developed for the energy transition can help to address the multiple challenges that the world faces today.
This presentation gives a short overview of Time-lapse (4D) seismic potential over a few case studies from TotalEnergies’ portfolio of assets. It shall begin with a brief introduction of basic concepts of 4D seismic; some of TotalEnergies’ 4D seismic related activities over the years as well as an overview of some published methods and workflows on 4D seismic. Some examples of application of 4D seismic in clastic and carbonate fields, as well as its use in a geomechanical context will be given, and finally conclude with a reflection that 4D is a transverse subject where many disciplines are involved.
The Upper Jurassic (Oxfordian) Smackover Formation is one of the most prolific oil and gas producers in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico coastal plain, where it deposited in a proximal carbonate ramp. This study is a comprehensive characterization of the depositional environment of the Smackover based on 3D seismic and well data from wells in the Vocation and Appleton oil fields located in the Conecuh and Manila Sub-basins in southwest Alabama.
This course can help you gain the ability to describe the complex and highly variable reservoirs, which are typified by complex internal heterogeneity.
An overview of a new ambient seismic imaging method and applications of the method throughout the lifecycles (exploration through refracing) of unconventional oil and/or gas fields.
Join us as Doug Peacock discusses how changes in oil price impact reserves in theory, and with practical industry examples. Presentation will be via Zoom on Thursday 8 October 15:00 SGT (UTC+8) Singapore time zone
Geoscientists are playing an active role in addressing sustainable development through ethical considerations as we navigate the energy transition. As the energy landscape evolves, it is critical to include all perspectives and background while listening and including the Indigenous voices from these communities as we navigate this landscape. Our speakers will highlight how they are using geoscience to advance sustainability within their respective fields, in addition to the ethical considerations for their projects.
This work investigates how heterogeneity can be defined and how we can quantify this term by describing a range of statistical heterogeneity (e.g. coefficient of variation and the Lorenz coefficient).
Physics is an essential component of geophysics but there is much that physics cannot know or address.
Request a visit from John Castagna!
In comparison with the known boundary conditions that promote salt deformation and flow in sedimentary basins, the processes involved with the mobilization of clay-rich detrital sediments are far less well established. This talk will use seismic examples in different tectonic settings to document the variety of shale geometries that can be formed under brittle and ductile deformations.
Request a visit from Juan I. Soto!
Three-dimensional (3D) seismic-reflection surveys provide one of the most important data types for understanding subsurface depositional systems. Quantitative analysis is commonly restricted to geophysical interpretation of elastic properties of rocks in the subsurface. Wide availability of 3D seismic-reflection data and integration provide opportunities for quantitative analysis of subsurface stratigraphic sequences. Here, we integrate traditional seismic-stratigraphic interpretation with quantitative geomorphologic analysis and numerical modeling to explore new insights into submarine-channel evolution.
Request a visit from Jacob Covault!
Around 170 million years ago, the Gulf of Mexico basin flooded catastrophically, and the pre-existing landscape, which had been a very rugged, arid, semi-desert world, was drowned beneath an inland sea of salt water. The drowned landscape was then buried under kilometers of salt, perfectly preserving the older topography. Now, with high-quality 3D seismic data, the salt appears as a transparent layer, and the details of the drowned world can be seen in exquisite detail, providing a unique snapshot of the world on the eve of the flooding event. We can map out hills and valleys, and a system of river gullies and a large, meandering river system. These rivers in turn fed into a deep central lake, whose surface was about 750m below global sea level. This new knowledge also reveals how the Louann Salt was deposited. In contrast to published models, the salt was deposited in a deep water, hypersaline sea. We can estimate the rate of deposition, and it was very fast; we believe that the entire thickness of several kilometers of salt was laid down in a few tens of thousands of years, making it possibly the fastest sustained deposition seen so far in the geological record.
Request a visit from Frank Peel!