Exploration Over the Last Ten Years, and the Next Five
David Bamford, Petromall Ltd
On the occasion of ROGTEC’s 10th anniversary, I would like to step back and reflect on Exploration since the magazine’s dawn, and over the immediate future.
It is very clear that the Majors failed to discover adequate new reserves last year – a good summary can be found in a very recent article by Bergin and Bousso (1).
But this is clearly not a new phenomenon. After the mega-mergers in the early years of the 21st Century – BP+Amoco+Arco; Exxon+Mobil; Total+Elf+Fina; Chevron+Texaco; Conoco+Philips – the new “super Majors” tended to focus on their new asset base and downplay exploration, especially frontier exploration.
It seemed to be left to the Independents to pick up the mantle and open the new frontiers – Brazil sub-salt; Cairn Energy in Rajasthan; Tullow Oil in Ghana and Uganda/Kenya; a re-working of Kurdistan; big gas discoveries offshore East Africa and in the Eastern Mediterranean. Unfortunately this all seems to have run out of steam, with failures for example offshore West Greenland, French Guiane, all along the West Africa Transform Margin, Namibia etc etc.
The truth is that the last two or three years have been horribly unsuccessful – and expensive – for offshore explorers, whether in the frontier regions or in mature basins such as the North Sea. Yes, we have seen success onshore in North America but in my view this is Exploitation not Exploration.
So what do I see looking forward? What follows is of course, all “in my humble opinion”!
What about where we should Explore?
Shouldn’t Deep Water and the Arctic be avoided?
The former is too just expensive – both to explore and to develop – at any imminent oil price, given the outrageous costs of drilling. The latter has this problem too but also incorporates potentially unmanageable environmental risk (2).
In general, onshore anywhere – for conventional and unconventional resources – looks like a better bet.
Are there “New Geographies” with Cost-of-Supply advantages?
Perhaps we should focus on Mexico which will open in 2015. Iran is a possibility but one that depends on the major political issues being resolved. Libya is probably not for just now, given the security situation.
Can we re-charge Mature Provinces?
How do we re-invigorate the UKCS and NOCS; and much of South East Asia? Using some new ‘disruptive’ technologies perhaps.
What about how we Explore?
I believe that our exploration performance problems stem mainly from our failure to perceive and describe more complex targets, more difficult reservoirs, properly. What is to be done?
Way back in the early 1990’s, the twin “disruptive” technologies of inexpensive 3D seismic and powerful interpretation workstations – the latter pioneered by Geoquest and Landmark – transformed the quality of our sub-surface insights. Hasn’t little happened since then!
I think that, first of all, we need to remind ourselves how to build regional and basin models… incorporating
» Palaeoreconstruction
» Basin modelling
» Tectonic modelling
» Lithofacies modelling
» Up-to-date methods for sequence stratigraphy analysis and sedimentation modelling, including specialised software.
I would say “Never enter a basin or play without this knowledge”!
Then, we need to move beyond the tired remedy of “yet-another-towed-streamer-3D seismic-survey”, and start applying new “disruptive” technologies such as seismic nodes, non-seismic geophysics (potential field, electro-magnetics), fibre optics and permanent reservoir monitoring (to exploit more reserves in fields that are already producing).
And then…
Integrating, analysing, visualising and correctly interpreting these multi-measurements goes way beyond the ‘lowest common denominator’ desktop applications available today where the world of innovation has been replaced by ‘one size fits all’.
I have always believed that the best insights are found when everybody – for example, geologists, geophysicists, petrophysicists, reservoir engineers, commercial folk – are looking at the same thing, and working on the problem at hand as a team.
Working in an integrated way… preferably looking at a big screen together.
References
2. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ae302d22-ad1b-11e4-a5c1-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=uk#slide0
