Oil Edges Lower as Weak Demand Signs Outweigh Fed, Middle East - 19 September, 2024 07:30 AM
Diamondback Eyes Natural Gas to Generate Power in Oil Patch - 19 September, 2024 07:30 AM
Western Nations Have Bought $2B in Russian Oil This Year Through Sanctions Workarounds - 19 September, 2024 07:30 AM
Equinor Makes New Gas Discovery in Norwegian North Sea - 19 September, 2024 07:30 AM
Pakistan’s Offshore Oil Reserves and What it Means for Country’s Energy Future - 19 September, 2024 07:30 AM
“As we are in the forefront of the oil boom associated with unconventional reservoirs, we are on a steep learning curve concerning related high-cost drilling and completion operations and we need to be aware of associated risks and do our best to minimize these risks and financial waste.” That’s Mamdouh A. Shebl, who has more than 34 years’ experience in unconventional reservoir development, and he has seen the protocols industry professionals take to assess the risks of such wells, both from an industry perspective as senior petrophysicist at Chevron’s MidContinent Business Unit, and from an academic one as petrophysics research professor at Texas A&M University. And he thinks the industry can do better.
Geopolitical tensions thrust Iran into an international spotlight in January, in a series of events that briefly unnerved oil markets. The aftermath could have serious, longer-term effects on the oil and gas industry, although those repercussions are difficult to predict. There is one certainty, though, according to one analyst: Iran’s situation under continued U.S.-enforced sanctions is untenable.
Scott Tinker, director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin, will grant no quarter about either the history and benefits of energy in our lives or its potential to improve our future. “Access to affordable, reliable energy is the foundation of modern economies,” he said. This subject has been on his mind of late, for he has spent the last two years studying those who are, as he puts it, suffering from “energy poverty.” Some 2.5 billion people worldwide live in some form of energy poverty today. “Access to secure energy,” Tinker said, “impacts all other major humanitarian issues, including hunger, shelter, clean water, education, healthcare, human migration, empowerment of women, and more. Those who do not have energy access suffer from energy poverty.”
Take a look at many of the major energy companies’ websites and you’re likely to see a “New Energies”-section with an outlined commitment for ultimately achieving “net zero” carbon emissions. Shell, for example, has increased the number of employees in its New Energies sector from 60 to 800 in the past two years. However, when looking at the world’s energy leaders, none have agreed on a clear path forward.
The oil and gas industry faces some significant near-term business challenges, which implies a difficult path forward for geoscientists and other professionals in the industry. Uncertainty might be the biggest challenge, which makes today’s situation especially tricky.
Talk of mitigating carbon footprints is growing louder. Regardless of differing views on the carbon issue, many in the oil and gas industry and beyond are beginning to make changes not only to be better stewards of the environment, but to protect business from growing public and investor sentiments against fossil fuels. Public opinion is now infiltrating investor sentiments and the industry needs to adopt significant changes that will keep the public and investors on board.
The second edition of AAPG’s Structural Styles of the Middle East GTW took place from 9-11 December 2019 at the Sundus Rotana Hotel in Muscat, Oman. The workshop attracted 87 attendees from 23 different companies and 11 different countries.
Earlier this year Mary Barrett, past president of the Division of Environmental Geology, wrote an article about “belonging.” I would like to expand on that theme and raise the bar to “What does it mean to be an Active Member?”
The end of the year is popularly depicted as a grizzled old man, stooped under the care and worry of the year gone by, ready to relinquish his responsibilities and pass the baton to the rosy-cheeked, diapered baby crawling expectantly into a new year. I’m not sure if this depiction is true this year, because I’m not sure where 2019 went – it feels like we barely got out of adolescence. And now, here we are, beginning anew. Happy New Year!
In the arena of super basins, what’s old is new again. With new technology, oil finders are finding great success by returning to basins once thought to be mature. While exploration continues along new frontiers, the industry has returned to the world’s richest petroleum-bearing basins with an all-out effort to optimize extensive infrastructure using new technology.
The Energy sector is a changing business environment. Throughout the 20th century fluctuations of oil supply and demand produced changes in the barrel price that pushed the growth or shrinkage of the industry. In this 21st century, new challenges such as diversification of the energy mix, boosting gas demand, require the exploration of critical minerals and development of new technologies as well.
Request a visit from Fernanda Raggio!
While there are many habitats that are associated with the deposition of organic-rich marine and lacustrine source rocks, one important pathway is linked to the onset of increased basin subsidence associated with major tectonic events. A key aspect is that this subsidence is spatially variable, with the uplift of basin flanks contemporaneous with the foundering of the basin center, resulting in a steeper basin profile.
Request a visit from Kurt W. Rudolph!
The carbonate sequences that were deposited in the now exhumed Tethyan Ocean influence many aspects of our lives today, either by supplying the energy that warms our homes and the fuel that powers our cars or providing the stunning landscapes for both winter and summer vacations. They also represent some of the most intensely studied rock formations in the world and have provided geoscientists with a fascinating insight into the turbulent nature of 250 Million years of Earth’s history. By combining studies from the full range of geoscience disciplines this presentation will trace the development of these carbonate sequences from their initial formation on the margins of large ancient continental masses to their present day locations in and around the Greater Mediterranean and Near East region. The first order control on growth patterns and carbonate platform development by the regional plate-tectonic setting, underlying basin architecture and fluctuations in sea level will be illustrated. The organisms that contribute to sequence development will be revealed to be treasure troves of forensic information. Finally, these rock sequences will be shown to contain all the ingredients necessary to form and retain hydrocarbons and the manner in which major post-depositional tectonic events led to the formation of some of the largest hydrocarbon accumulations in the world will be demonstrated.
Request a visit from Keith Gerdes!
As oil and gas exploration and production occur in deeper basins and more complex geologic settings, accurate characterization and modeling of reservoirs to improve estimated ultimate recovery (EUR) prediction, optimize well placement and maximize recovery become paramount. Existing technologies for reservoir characterization and modeling have proven inadequate for delivering detailed 3D predictions of reservoir architecture, connectivity and rock quality at scales that impact subsurface flow patterns and reservoir performance. Because of the gap between the geophysical and geologic data available (seismic, well logs, cores) and the data needed to model rock heterogeneities at the reservoir scale, constraints from external analog systems are needed. Existing stratigraphic concepts and deposition models are mostly empirical and seldom provide quantitative constraints on fine-scale reservoir heterogeneity. Current reservoir modeling tools are challenged to accurately replicate complex, nonstationary, rock heterogeneity patterns that control connectivity, such as shale layers that serve as flow baffles and barriers.
Request a visit from Tao Sun!
Engineering of wind farms, development of carbon sequestration projects in shelfal waters, the proliferation of communication cables that connect the world, all of these things suggest that it is time to re-examine what we know about shelf processes both updip-to-downdip and along shoreline, and the influence of shelf processes on erosion and transport of sediments.
Request a visit from Lesli Wood!
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!
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!
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!
Physics is an essential component of geophysics but there is much that physics cannot know or address.
Request a visit from John Castagna!
Climate change is not only happening in the atmosphere but also in the anthroposphere; in some ways the former could drive or exacerbate the latter, with extreme weather excursions and extreme excursions from societal norms occurring all over the earth. Accomplishing geoscience for a common goal – whether that is for successful business activities, resource assessment for public planning, mitigating the impacts of geological hazards, or for the sheer love of furthering knowledge and understanding – can and should be done by a workforce that is equitably developed and supported. Difficulty arises when the value of institutional programs to increase equity and diversity is not realized.
Request a visit from Sherilyn Williams-Stroud!
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