What’s new in exploration

Climate concerns, real or not, are working effectively to kill oil. The intent is to make all people energy dependent on a handful of persons. Not you. Chevron continues as a hydrocarbon company despite green mail and trendy Euro oil. Apparently, CVX made a deal for future oil reserves and EXPLORATION in Iraq. Be still my heart.

A combined SEG and SPE convention was announced for fall 2020 in Houston. Tech and problem solvers in the same room. Wow! Because of global concerns with health and money, the meeting will be virtual, therefore almost useless. Maybe next year we could include the Am. Drillers; both of them. Facts are not meaningful in political arguments.

…our planet’s magnetic field acts as a kind of shield—protecting Earth from solar winds and cosmic radiation … any reduction in its strength is an important event we need to monitor closely, as these changes could ultimately have significant implications …. In the last two centuries, Earth’s magnetic field has lost about 9% of its strength on average, the ESA says, assisted by a drop in minimum field strength in the South Atlantic Anomaly from approximately 24,000 nanoteslas to 22,000 nanoteslas over the past 50 years.
magnetic shield

Radiation, protons, photons and the Core bring warming not CO₂. Fact: nature sequesters better.

Measuring … the team was able to associate periods of increased storage of respired carbon (and low deep-sea oxygen levels) with periods of decreased global atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during the past 70,000 years … we find that the Pacific Ocean, like the Southern Ocean, is a location for deep-ocean respired carbon storage during periods of decreased global atmospheric CO₂ concentrations,…The sediment core was extracted … aboard the R/V Melville in 2010.
Conservation Matters

Dilemma: CO₂ flood remains valuable to both oil producers and oil haters. I know a group of researchers comparing CO₂ flood with natural gas plus foam as flood. Low cost natural gas is about everywhere compared to hardly any collected and distributed volume of $$-CO₂. Decrease flaring?

During slack times everyone retreats to re-examine their existing data. As computers improve, about 5x every three years, more derivative information is created. Terra-volume is more difficult to play with than Giga. So, data AI becomes important.

AI used to mean acoustic impedance. Acoustic impedance is “THE” math of physics that defines all—yes, all—seismic imaging and seismic attributes.

Fig. 1. Inverted acoustic impedance section comparison at the well before (left—4ms sample rate) and after (right—1ms sample rate) spectral extrapolation. The reservoir top and base (8 milliseconds apart) are indicated along the trajectory. Note the improved match and higher frequency content in the spectrally extrapolated acoustic inversion. GSH April 2020.

Which image would you drill? The GSH figure is a poor comparison because the left image at 4 ms cannot see the higher frequencies in the 1 ms image, Fig. 1. Most inversion folks want low frequency for rock physics interpretation while retaining high frequencies for spatial accuracy. Confused? You are not alone.

The better tech and service for reservoirs are derivatives of exploration physics. Since companies already own their reservoirs, efficiency of recovery becomes king. Almost all focus for the next two years will be understanding the differences and similarities between surface geophysics, and borehole information when describing geologic engineering parameters. SEG Leading Edge June 2020 features reservoir geo professional papers that show case limits in seismic methods, and progress in interpretation-deduction. Resolution between any seismic, surface or borehole is << well logs. But well logs only show inches around the well bore most often distorted by mud and drill fracs. Normal in 3D/4D are non-unique seismic amplitudes. Interpreters attempt to explain uniqueness from numerous variant causes.

Most geologists who use workstations are good at observation of continuity, but not so much at math, and almost no understanding of acoustic physics. Engineers are zip on acoustics, get math but see reservoirs as monoliths. Drillers only ask how many feet per hour and mud weight?

About the Authors

William (Bill) Head

Contributing Editor

William (Bill) Head is a technologist with over 40 years of experience in U.S. and international exploration.