What's new in exploration

Exploration is an art form practiced with skill, sweat, occasional blood, and money. I know of a legend that the owners of a rather large oil field in south Texas discovered it by believing that the only topographic rise on the property for miles, say no more than 6 ft, must be a salt dome, similar to a nearby discovery called Old Ocean. They began drilling by themselves with a water-well cable tool rig. Fortunately, they failed and hired a rotary driller, who promptly found gas. That ranch has so much producible gas, I don’t recommend even smoking there when driving by. Did I also mention luck?

Exploration is about vision and visualization. Without both, you won’t get very far or rich. No one in HR can find that type of person, based on an application. It seems to me from my experiences that all HR is about is control, and trying to lower their personal job risk. Exploration risk, however, will always remain high on new plays. There is a reason why the AAPG salary survey shows that big oil pays more for experience. Probably, those folks made their mistakes previously, and usually with someone else’s money. They should not be making those mistakes again.

But we do, often, use technology as the excuse. I once worked on a seismic problem over the Qatar arch. We had about 11 marine seismic surveys that all showed the same very poor images. When management was told that the geology was the cause, they went with the new face in the room and ordered another survey. Data did look better than before, but only because film quality had improved for the new-age, 2,000-ft cable survey. No time migration was allowed, since management knew they had found plenty of oil on unmigrated data. Actually, back then it was called data vs. migrated data. Today, we do not mention that data are migrated when delivered. It’s similar to all cars now having AC vs. hand-crank windows. The next oil company, which took over the property, drilled a few thousand feet deeper than we did, and the rest is history. That new face was sent back to the drafting table with a yellow pencil and a new electric eraser. It was not a promotion.

What’s new? You may have heard about the U.S. opening up the East Coast for exploration [BOEM, July 18, 2014]. Permits for marine seismic have been issued, conditionally, to TGS, GX Technology, WesternGeco, CGG, Spectrum Geo and ARKeX Ltd., and maybe others, by now. http://www.boem.gov/Atlantic-G-and-G-Permitting/

The U.S. government opened the Eastern OCS for discussion, and the roar is still going on from a poorly informed public and professional environmental concerns. The litigation has begun, and the first new seismic “shot” is yet to occur. The BOEM permits only allow for the study of the potential presence of hydrocarbons; no production activity is actually permitted. Exploration will begin when all the interested and intervening parties can see the results of the initial study through the lens of a poorly knowledged courtroom. I say that, since both my geoscience experience and law degree have taught me something about human nature. Maybe, first drilling, if at all, will take place in 2020. That’s okay. The East Coast has been there since the early Jurassic. It’s not going anywhere soon. The Barents Sea, Australia, Brazil, Gabon, and even the non-U.S. Arctic, are already open today for exploration. Money is going there now.

Tech news. Fiber optics and telemetry revolutionized the exploration industry, 15 to 20 years ago. Now, that technology is set to reignite interrogating fiber-optic systems that are less than 1-mm thick, can move more data faster, and in lot less physical space than all the combined technology that we used to go to the Moon. Go look and wow at the VSP and marine seismic technology toys that will be presented at the Denver SEG, Oct. 26-31.

We also see data move across the always promised, satellite broad bandwidth in ever-increasing efficiencies. Soon, even some seismic will be transmittable from survey location to the processing center, in close-to-real time. The sooner that visualization is available to evaluate a reservoir or prospect, the sooner production will come on-line. Time is money.

In an earlier column, I had mentioned a JIP/RPSEA study with Texas A&M for a marine vibrator, which is actually an alternate marine seismic energy source, not an open air gun. Prototypes have been created and bench-tested. Assuming the devices actually work, RPSEA and Battelle are putting together a follow-up JIP to measure potential effects of the new sources on marine mammals, while at the same time, working to improve passive monitoring of marine mammal activity.

Active monitoring is a daylight event, with people on deck. Passive monitoring, called passive acoustic monitoring (PAM), has been stated as a permit requirement. So far, PAM has only been about 30% or so successful in detecting marine mammals, within an arbitrary danger zone. Even so, it has improved operational time. The goal of the new JIP is to improve that margin, with calibrated data, using recently available underwater technology. BOEM and BSEE have an active interest in this project, and, hopefully, will give input as well.

Another JIP that is still open and worth mentioning is performing a series of offsets and sources in a high-resolution, 3C VSP survey onshore, using both primary and shear-wave sources. This JIP is being performed by Paulsson Inc., and the BEG of Texas. I should note that the DeepStar joint industry project recently solicited for a concept study of deepwater 3C VSP applications. There seems to be a developing trend of interest.