First Break November 2019 - Marine Seismic & EM

VO L U M E 3 7 I I S S U E 11 I N OV E M B E R 2 019

SPECIAL TOPIC

Marine Seismic & EM TECHNICAL ARTICLE Low-powered AUVs for large-scale ocean-bottom acquisition INDUSTRY NEWS Chevron sets target to cut carbon emissions

GABON SOUTH BASIN Data for Gabon’s offshore 12th licensing round CGG has acquired 9,600 km of long-offset, 2D data to help define the full extent of existing and new plays in the Gabon South Basin and to understand the thickness variations in the sediment overburden for source rock maturity analysis.

The data is being processed through an advanced broadband workflow. This not only increases resolution and improves characterization of the turbidite systems, it also provides deep penetration of low frequencies to help describe the nature of the deep crust.

The right data, in the right place, at the right time

cgg.com/multi-client

FIRST BREAK® An EAGE Publication

CHAIRMAN EDITORIAL BOARD Peter Rowbotham (Peter.Rowbotham@apachecorp.com) EDITOR Damian Arnold (editorfb@eage.org) MEMBERS, EDITORIAL BOARD • Paul Binns, consultant (pebinns@btinternet.com) • Patrick Corbett, Heriot-Watt University (patrick_corbett@pet.hw.ac.uk) • Tom Davis, Colorado School of Mines (tdavis@mines.edu) • Anthony Day, PGS (anthony.day@pgs.com) • Peter Dromgoole, Equinor UK (pdrum@equinor.com) • Rutger Gras, Oranje-Nassau Energy (gras@onebv.com) • Hamidreza Hamdi, University of Calgary (hhamdi@ucalgary.ca) • Ed Kragh, Schlumberger Cambridge Research (edkragh@slb.com) • John Reynolds, Reynolds International (jmr@reynolds-international.co.uk) • James Rickett, Schlumberger (jrickett@slb.com) • Dave Stewart, Dave Stewart Geoconsulting Ltd (djstewart.dave@gmail.com) • Femke Vossepoel, Delft University of Technology (f.c.vossepoel@tudelft.nl) MEDIA PRODUCTION MANAGER Thomas Beentje (tbe@eage.org) ACCOUNT MANAGER ADVERTISING Keziah Starrenburg (ksg@eage.org) PRODUCTION Saskia Nota (layout@eage.org) Ivana Geurts (layout@eage.org) EAGE EUROPE OFFICE PO Box 59 3990 DB Houten The Netherlands • +31 88 995 5055 • eage@eage.org • www.eage.org EAGE RUSSIA & CIS OFFICE EAGE Russia & CIS Office EAGE Geomodel LLC 19 Leninsky Prospekt 119071, Moscow, Russia • +7 495 640 2008 • moscow@eage.org • www.eage.ru EAGE MIDDLE EAST OFFICE EAGE Middle East FZ-LLC Dubai Knowledge Village Block 13 Office F-25 PO Box 501711 Dubai, United Arab Emirates • +971 4 369 3897 • middle_east@eage.org • www.eage.org EAGE ASIA PACIFIC OFFICE UOA Centre Office Suite 19-15-3A No. 19, Jalan Pinang 50450 Kuala Lumpur Malaysia • +60 3 272 201 40 • asiapacific@eage.org • www.eage.org EAGE LATIN AMERICA OFFICE Carrera 14 No 97-63 Piso 5 Bogotá, Colombia • +57 1 4232948 • americas@eage.org • www.eage.org

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Vertical dipole CSEM: 3D acquisition and data impact from infrastructure

Editorial Contents 3

EAGE News

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Crosstalk

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Industry News

Technical Articles

37 Estimating rock physical parameters using anisotropic 3D seismic data to characterize unconventional Vaca Muerta oil shale deposits in the Neuquèn Basin, western Argentina

David Curia and Paul Veeken 49 Low-powered autonomous underwater vehicles for large-scale oceanbottom acquisition

Fabio Mancini, Henry Debens and Ben Hollings

Special Topic: Marine Seismic & EM

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Redefining marine towed-streamer acquisition Martin Widmaier, David O’Dowd and Carine Roalkvam

63 Which high-precision clock to choose for high performance and competitive OBN?

Cyril Boissy and Nicolas Vorobyev 67

CSEM acquisition methods in a multi-physics context Lucy MacGregor, James Tomlinson and Kim Gunn Maver

73 Advanced imaging solutions for tailored multi-source and multi-vessel surveys Gordon Poole, Vetle Vinje, Ewa Kaszycka, Thomas Elboth, Thomas Mensch, Risto Siliqi, Anne Camerer, Hari Krishna and Erling Frantzen 79 Vertical dipole CSEM: 3D acquisition and data impact from infrastructure

Kjetil Eide 85 Gas potential evaluation offshore Croatia to trigger renewed exploration Vittorio Zucconi, Valerio Memmo, Marijan Krpan, Ivana Butorac, Paolo Esestime, Karyna Rodriguez and Neil Hodgson 92

Calendar of Events

EAGE MEMBERS CHANGE OF ADDRESS NOTIFICATION Send to: EAGE Membership Dept at EAGE Office (address above) FIRST BREAK ON THE WEB www.firstbreak.org ISSN 0263-5046 (print) / ISSN 1365-2397 (online)

cover: GPR, a new ocean bottom node, designed by Sercel and BGP. Our Special Topic on Marine Seismic starts on p 56.

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European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers

Board 2019-2020

Michael Pöppelreiter President

Dirk Orlowsky Vi c e-President Elect

Everhard Muijzert Secretary-Treasurer

Near Surface Geoscience Division George Apostolopoulos Chair Alireza Malehmir Vice-Chair Micki Allen Contact Officer EEGS/North America Riyadh Al-Saad Oil & Gas Liaison Esther Bloem Technical Programme Officer Hongzhu Cai Liaison China Albert Casas Membership Officer Eric Cauquil Liaison Shallow Marine Geophysics Ranajit Ghose Editor in Chief Near Surface Geophysics Hamdan Ali Hamdan Liaison Middle East Andreas Kathage Liaison Officer First Break Musa Manzi Liaison Africa Myrto Papadopoulou Young Professional Liaison Koya Suto Liaison Asia Pacific Catherine Truffert Industry Liaison

Oil & Gas Geoscience Division

Caroline Le Turdu Membership and Cooperation Officer

Ingrid Magnus Publications Officer

Colin MacBeth Education Officer

Michael Peter Suess Chair; TPC Lucy Slater Vice-Chair Caroline Jane Lowrey Immediate Past Chair; TPC Erica Angerer Member Wiebke Athmer Member Rick Donselaar TPC Xavier Garcia NSGD Liaison Sebastian Geiger Member Juliane Heiland TPC Tijmen-Jan Moser Editor-in-chief Geophysical Prospecting Ann Muggeridge IOR Committee Liasion Francesco Perrone YP Liaison Philip Ringrose Editor-in-chief Petroleum Geoscience Conor Ryan REvC Liaison Martin Widmaier TPC Aart-Jan van Wijngaarden Technical Programme Officer Michael Zhdanov NSGD Liaison

SUBSCRIPTIONS First Break is published monthly. It is free to EAGE members. The membership fee of EAGE is € 50.00 a year (including First Break, EarthDoc (EAGE’s geoscience database), Learning Geoscience (EAGE’s Education website) and online access to a scientific journal.

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Orders for current subscriptions and back issues should be sent to EAGE Publications BV, Journal Subscriptions, PO Box 59, 3990 DB, Houten, The Netherlands. Tel: +31 (0)88 9955055, E-mail: subscriptions@eage.org, www.firstbreak.org.

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COPYRIGHT & PHOTOCOPYING © 2019 EAGE All rights reserved. First Break or any part thereof may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transcribed in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying and recording, ­without the prior written permission of the Publisher.

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HIGHLIGHTS

EAGE MEMBERS

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Special Issue on Geoelectrical Monitoring planned for Near Surface Geophysics

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Discussing geostatistical advances in the birthplace of the Renaissance

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Second marine acquisition workshop planned for 2020

Appreciating the value of EAGE membership Message from Michael Pöppelreiter, president EAGE.

Michael Pöppelreiter during the opening of the EAGE Annual Conference in London.

Fellow Members, I welcome this opportunity to invite you to join me in subscribing once again as a member of the EAGE for the next year.

EAGE prides itself on continually evolving to meet the needs of its members, with services that reflect changing developments in our disciplines. However, one thing that has remained constant is the commitment of our members, communities and supporters to the advancement of the geosciences and engineering, and

the strong bonds that this commitment creates.

EAGE’s mission has if anything become more relevant, even crucial, in many aspects of modern society. The geoscience and engineering disciplines can uniquely address so many of our current global challenges in energy, stewardship of the environment, and sustainable infrastructure for communities across the globe. Its role in optimizing the ongoing energy transition cannot be understated.

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It is the Association’s role to provide support and networking opportunities for our members in all their professional endeavours through our events, publications, special interest groups, education opportunities, local chapter initiatives and the EarthDoc online database Next year will mark a few important milestones for our organization. The Membership Recognition Programme, aimed at rewarding our loyal members, will enter its second year.

Our flagship EarthDoc online database will relaunch on a new and improved platform. Since its launch, EarthDoc has grown beyond our wildest dreams, now hosting over 70,000 papers from our events, journals and publications from our associated societies. This growth pushed the capacity of our system, and has led to the relaunch. It will ensure that this immense source of knowledge remains a world class source of reference and offers a more interactive experience in the years to come.

Maintaining and developing the EarthDoc platform is a key goal of the EAGE Board. Preventing any undue increase in our membership rates is also vital. We must always enable as many geoscientists and engineers as possible worldwide to be part of the EAGE. We I

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EAGE NEWS

think our new EarthDoc subscription model, explained in more detail on page 6, straddles that middle way, guaranteeing all members some access to the content.

In the coming year we will see the results of our latest foray into the digitalization of the energy industry with the launch of the First EAGE Digitalization Conference and Exhibition in Vienna (6-9 April 2020). This builds on the groundwork of the Digital Transformation Area introduced at our EAGE Annual Conference and Exhibition, as well as on a number of notable regional events, including our latest High Performance Computing workshop held in Dubai last month.

I am particularly excited about how we are finding new ways to enable our members to interact with each other. Our Women in Geoscience and Engineering, and Young Professional Communities, led the way in forming communites based on members’ interests. In 2019 we saw the launch of two new communities, Decarbonization & Energy Transition and Artificial Intelligence, both of which are already very active on LinkedIn and dedicated to networking on these important sectors.

Of course we all look forward to meeting at the EAGE Annual, as it returns to Amsterdam on 8-11 June 2020. This is our special moment for the entire community to gather in one place to catch up on

the latest developments in all our fields of expertise, and meet up with business contacts and old and new friends. It is also the time when you, the members, can attend the Annual General Meeting for Members (AGMM). You can learn all about the Association moving forward and offer your thoughts on the future direction of the Association. Let’s not forget, we also get an opportunity to celebrate our most loyal members who have achieved Silver, Gold and Platinum Membership Status within EAGE. There you have it. We are in for an exciting year and, both as your president and an EAGE member, I can’t wait to see everything unfold. Please make sure you join me.

Special Issue on Geoelectrical Monitoring planned for Near Surface Geophysics

‘Geoelectrical monitoring: advances in measurement and modelling for environmental and engineering applications’ is the title of a forthcoming Special Issue of Near Surface Geophysics (NSG) for which contributions are being invited.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to showcase the latest developments in geoelectrical monitoring. The rapid evolution of time-lapse geoelectrical measurement systems and modelling approaches are transforming the way we monitor the subsurface. The sensitivity of electrical meas4

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urements to fluid and temperature driven processes means that geoelectrical monitoring has very wide applications across the field of near surface geophysics – relevant to topics as diverse as geohazards, mining, crop studies, groundwater monitoring and remediation, and geothermal processes.

We welcome papers that describe new approaches to instrumentation and measurement, monitoring design considerations, time-lapse inversion and modelling, and novel applications of geoelectrics for engineering and environmental monitoring.

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Please inform one of the Guest Editors about your intention to contribute to this Special Issue by sending a short (one-page) abstract by November 21, 2019. Full manuscripts presenting original research results and insights should be prepared according to the NSG guidelines (https://onlinelibrary.wiley. com/page/journal/18730604/homepage/ author-guidelines) and submitted before 15 January, 2020 via the online submission system of the journal (https:// mc.manuscriptcentral.com/nsg). In this system and in your covering letter, please indicate the title of the Special Issue. All submitted manuscripts will go through the regular review process of Near Surface Geophysics. The publication of this Special Issue is planned for August 2020, but all accepted papers will be published as ‘Early View’ as soon as the proofs are approved.

Guest Editors for this issue are: Prof Jonathan E. Chambers, British Geological Survey, UK, Email: jecha@bgs.ac.uk; Dr Meng Heng Loke, Geotomo Software, Malaysia, Email: drmhloke@ yahoo.com; and Prof Andrew Binley, Lancaster University, UK, Email: a.binley@ lancaster.ac.uk.

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EAGE NEWS

Building the new EarthDoc into our membership structure From January 2020, EAGE’s EarthDoc will move to a much-improved new digital platform, allowing for faster and more effective research. A variety of other important upgrades will make for an improved user experience.

Since its inception, EarthDoc has been one of the most valued EAGE membership services, granting our members access to the latest geoscience and engineering content from our events, journals and associated societies. EarthDoc has grown beyond our wildest dreams, now hosting over 70,000 papers, and well beyond the capacity of our original database. To facilitate this growth, EarthDoc will transition to a new digital platform. It will allow for faster and more effective research and a variety of other important upgrades that will make sure that our flagship product remains a premier knowledge centre for the geoscience and engineering global community.

EAGE endeavours to ensure the quality of its membership services, without compromising the membership community

by raising membership fees. This enables our geoscientists and engineers from all backgrounds to be part of our global association. However the rising costs of business and the need to invest in platforms like EarthDoc can make this difficult.

In order to keep EAGE membership costs unchanged while transitioning EarthDoc to a new digital platform capable of processing the massive amounts of data required, the decision was made to charge additional costs for access to the entire EarthDoc platform. These additional charges allow for EAGE to maintain and develop this important platform, while continuing to provide members of all levels access to the most recent content.

The way it works is that all members of EAGE will retain a level of access, based on their recognition level. First year Green Members will be able to access the most recent two calendar years.

In the second year, upon becoming a Bronze Member, the most recent four calendar years will be available, with

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Free Access to the EarthDoc Archive (Most Recent Calendar Years Available)

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Support: Economic Hardship Programme

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Invitation: Exclusive Social Gathering at the EAGE Annual

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Access to VIP Registration Desk at the EAGE Annual Always Early Bird Registration for EAGE events (excluding joint events) Optional Full Access in Earth Doc (Annual Fees)

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€50

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€50

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access increasing all the way until Platinum Membership where you will be able to access the latest 19 years of EarthDoc. As you grow as a member, you will earn a deeper access to the archive. However, those who would like immediate access to the full archive for a year, an additional modest contribution to support the new platform is asked, the amount depending on your Membership Recognition level as per the table below.

In addition to bolstering the framework, EarthDoc offers many valuable improvements.

• More advanced search capabilities, and a much improved responsive system will streamline the experience for users.

• With the implementation of full-text HTML articles, EarthDoc reading will adapt to any mobile device, allowing for a smooth transition when researchers are on the move.

• From January 2020, members will have access to figures, images and tables of the article from the landing page, whether it is a journal article or otherwise, and you will be able to download directly to a PowerPoint file.

References, supplements, citations and other important data can also be found on the article page.

• Also improved will be EarthDoc’s ability to process mathematical equations contained in articles. The integration of MathML means that equations will be displayed accurately on the site without having to revert back to the PDF file. It also gives our members the opportunity to directly access the MathML code in which the equation is written.

With the transition to this new system, EarthDoc remains your home for geoscience and engineering knowledge, putting cutting-edge, innovative research at your fingertips. With the support of our members, we hope to continue enhancing your knowledge experience for many years to come.

To learn more about the benefits of the Recognition Level you have earned, go to www.eage.org.

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EAGE NEWS

Warm response to LC Netherlands geothermal energy meeting

Geothermal conference meeting in progress.

Geothermal rocks! That’s the conclusion from EAGE Local Chapter (LC) Netherlands following two stellar lectures on geothermal energy attended by 45 geosci-

entists in the Deltares Colloquium in Delft on 9 October, joined remotely by 17 participants from the Oslo Society of Exploration Geophysicists.

Dr Marit Brommer, executive director of the International Geothermal Association (IGA), won the audience’s attention and generated animated discussion with her presentation entitled ‘Overview of geothermal energy and geothermal crossover technologies’.

Reaction was equally positive for the second talk of the evening by Dr Pauline Kruiver from Deltares on ‘Measuring and monitoring the subsurface for geothermal applications’ again followed by a spirited Q&A session.

Snacks and drinks allowed more time for social interaction after the formal proceedings were over. LC Netherlands would like to thank the speakers for their contribution, Deltares and EAGE’s support, and attendees for making the event such a success, which we hope to repeat with future meetings.

A good way to stay informed about the LC’s activities is to join their LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/ groups/13690220/ or to become a member of the LC by sending an email to eageLCNetherlands@gmail.com.

A century of excellence celebrated at the AGH University of Poland Polish achievements in the field of geoscience were front and centre at a special conference on 10-13 September to celebrate the 100th anniversary of applied geology at the AGH University of Science and Technology.

The conference on ‘Challenges in Applied Geology and Geophysics’ was organized under the patronage of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and Higher Education, and the honorary patronage of the Secretary of State, Government Plenipotentiary for the State’s Raw Materials Policy at the Ministry of Environment.

Over 250 participants, among them members of EAGE Local Chapter Poland, attended the event coming from univer-

sities, scientific institutes and industry including representatives from Serbia, Romania, Germany, Greece, Albania, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Norway, Czech Republic and Saudi Arabia.

Conference presentations covered Applied Geophysics, Geochemistry, Geochemical and Mineralogical studies, Hydrogeology, and Renewable Energy plus a student and poster session. A wide spectrum of problems and tasks undertaken by scientists and engineers in applied geology and applied geophysics were reviewed. In discussions on exploration and exploitation of major mineral and energy resources, emphasis was placed risk assessment and environmental impact of those activities. Attention was

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given to case studies from Poland. Polish and worldwide data were presented.

The issue of effective use of ecological energy sources especially geothermal energy was a conference focus. This included discussion on the current state of geothermal resource utilization and the results of research aimed at developing the geothermal sector in Poland and further afield.

Two prizes were awarded at the conference, one to Michał Wilkosz, PhD student at the Faculty of Geology Geophysics and Environmental Protection AGH UST for the best presentation in the Students session; the other to Akinniyi Akinsunmad, who participates in the AGH UST UNESCO Poland-sponsored programme.

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EAGE NEWS

Germany opens a new EAGE student chapter

Aachen Cathedral, Germany.

Since September 2019, RWTH Aachen University, Germany’s largest technical university is home to the newest EAGE Student Chapter. The chapter was initiated by students of the Masters Applied Geosciences programme with specialization on energy and mineral resources focusing strongly on E&P related subjects but also on emerging geothermal topics.

It will be led by Alexander Jüstel, and will be supported by the vice president Luis Alberto Pizano Wagner, secretary Alexander von Schéele and treasurer Mohamed Moursy as well as several other student members.

The Chapter is the second student association within the Department of Geosciences and Geography next to the already existing SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers) Student Chapter. The current board aims at a merger to create

synergies and provide the most benefits for the student members of both chapters.

The EAGE Student Chapter can thereby

use the pre-existing infrastructure and contacts established by the SPE student chapter. It has established tight relations with members of the university, representatives from industry in Germany and internationally but also with other student associations such as the local student council.

The new Chapter hopes to benefit from its proximity to the EAGE Headquarters in Houten, Netherlands.

Also, as the university is known for its international connections the Chapter intends to invite companies to present themselves, their fields of expertise, and internship possibilities or graduation programmes for students of various study programmes.

One of the first tasks will be to organize the 9th International Geosciences Student Conference (IGSC) on 5-11 June 2020 at RWTH Aachen University. The scientific purpose of the conference is to provide a platform for students to present their current research and thesis work to other students from around the world, scientists from different universities and research institutes, industry representatives, and sponsors. There will be soft skills workshops to strengthen and expand participating the speaking and presenting skills of students.

The Chapter is also inviting other EAGE Students Chapters to participate in the conference and take the chance to visit the historic city of Aachen. Future possibilities to organize a joint event will also be explored.

EAGE Education Calendar 26-27 NOV

EDUCATION DAYS AMSTERDAM: MULTIPLE SHORT COURSES PROGRAMME

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

4 NOV

EAGE EDUCATION TOUR 13, BY IAN JONES

THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS

12-15 NOV

EDUCATION DAYS HOUSTON

HOUSTON, USA

17 NOV

EAGE EDUCATION TOUR 13, BY IAN JONES

LAGOS, NIGERIA

18-22 NOV

EDUCATION DAYS MOSCOW: MULTIPLE SHORT COURSES PROGRAMME

MOSCOW, RUSSIA

27-20 NOV

EDUCATION DAYS AMSTERDAM: MACHINE LEARNING PROGRAMME

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND REGISTRATION PLEASE VISIT WWW.EAGE.ORG AND WWW.LEARNINGGEOSCIENCE.ORG.

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EAGE NEWS

Second marine acquisition workshop planned for 2020 Tim Brice (Shearwater Geoservices), workshop technical committee member, writes: A second EAGE Workshop on Marine Acquisition is being planned for 25-27 August 2020 in Oslo. This follows the very successful and well-attended workshop held in Oslo in August of 2018.

Due to the popularity of the event we will be booking a larger venue in 2020 to accommodate more people. As before, the workshop will serve as a forum for presentations and discussions on various aspects of marine acquisition technology.

The organizing committee is seeking contributions on technological advances in this field and inviting participants to share their experiences, lessons learned, and visions for the future. In addition, well-regarded keynote speakers will outline their views on advances in the industry and the challenges ahead.

The workshop is being scheduled over three days. The first day will focus on advances in seismic source technology and source configurations. Our industry has recently gained experience with novel source configurations including smaller sources, multiple sources, wide tow sources, near offset and zero offset acquisition.

The development of alternative source technology is progressing and includes marine vibrators which we expect to have discussion on. We also hope to have

papers on how the new source technology relates to operational efficiency, seismic data quality and environmental sensitivity.

On the second day, the workshop will cover the latest developments in ocean bottom seismic (OBS) technology, permanent monitoring technology, and hybrid OBS and streamer acquisition. Advances in survey planning will be addressed. We aim for presentations about state-of-theart technology and acquisition geometries designed to improve quality and efficiency. We also encourage papers discussing new instrumentation, automatization and robotics including seismic acquisition using unmanned vehicles The third day of the workshop will look beyond seismic technology. We will discuss advances in different geophysical methods, and how this information can be integrated for a common and better understanding of the subsurface. This will include multi-disciplinary integration of 4D data and encourage case studies on these subjects. We will also discuss the advantages of integrating artificial intelligence into the workflow.

The workshop is suitable for all geophysicists with an interest in marine geophysical acquisition. This includes students and professionals in academic

institutions, equipment manufacturers and suppliers, survey design geophysicists and processing geophysicists

‘The 2018 programme showcased the state of the art in acquisition technology, with an excellent balance of talks from operators, seismic vendors and academia.

The workshop directly influenced AkerBP’s choice of seismic solutions for ongoing acquisition projects. We expect no less from the upcoming workshop, and are looking forward to participating.’

- Jan Kommedal (reservoir technology manager, AkerBP) ‘The presentations gave an excellent overview of current trends in marine acquisition with all the major players present (many of them local). We will definitely attend next time and are looking forward to contributing actively to the technical programme with exciting developments.’

- Hugo Ruiz (vice-president G&G, Octio)

EAGE Student Calendar 28 OCT - 1 NOV

X GEOPHYSICAL WEEK

SALVADOR, BRAZIL

21-DEC

LAURIE DAKE CHALLENGE FIRST ROUND SUBMISSION DEADLINE

ONLINE

12 MAR 2020

EAGE ONLINE GEO-QUIZ (STUDENT CHAPTERS ONLY)

ONLINE

16-19 MAR

GEO 2020 - STUDENT CONFERENCE

BAHRAIN, THE KINGDOM OF BAHRAIN

06-09 APR

9TH INTERNATIONALGEOLOGICAL AND GEOSCIENCE CONFERENCE (STUDENT ACTIVITIES)

SAINT PETERSBURG,RUSSIA

20-22 APR

NEAR SURFACE GEOSCIENCE & ENGINEERING CONFERENCE (REGIONAL GEO QUIZ)

CHANG MAI,THAILAND

7-JUN

LAURIE DAKE CHALLENGE FINAL

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS

8-JUN

LAURIE DAKE CHALLENGE ANNOUNCEMENT

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS

8-11 JUN

EAGE ANNUAL CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 2020 / STUDENT ACTIVITIES

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS

7-10 JUL

9TH INTERNATIONAL GEOSCIENCE STUDENT CONFERENCE

STUDENT CONFERENCE

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND REGISTRATION PLEASE CHECK THE STUDENT SECTION AT WWW.EAGE.ORG

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EAGE NEWS

Seal of approval for Palermo conference A report by Frauke Schaefer (Wintershall Dea), co-chair of the organizing committee for the Fifth EAGE Fault and Top Seals Conference held in Palermo, Italy, on 8-11 September 2019.

Coastal outcrop field trip in Sicily.

Locals rubbed their eyes when a crowd of 80 geoscientists from all over the world suddenly flooded the coastal plain of Casteluzzo, Sicily. The Fifth International Conference on Fault and Top Seals in the historic city of Palermo was making its presence felt! Over 130 delegates enjoyed a stimulating and highly successful conference, including an instructive field trip that provided the opportunity to examine and discuss faulted carbonate rocks in three beautiful coastal outcrops. The conference in Palermo proved yet again that this series is the leading forum for discussing the latest academic research and sharing experiences of both successful and unsuccessful applications of fault and top seal analysis.

The conference gathered global experts from different industries (hydrocarbons, CO2 storage and radioactive

waste disposal) and academia, with a wide range of backgrounds (geology, petroleum engineering, petrophysics, geophysics, modelling, geomechanics and geochemistry). This was an event not to miss for the seal assessment community, and Palermo was a worthy location both for its beauty and surrounding geology.

Predicting the behaviour of fault and top seals is still a major uncertainty not just in the exploration, appraisal and production of conventional petroleum reservoirs, but also in areas such as shale gas, CO2 storage and radioactive waste disposal. The quality of the 43 oral and 36 poster presentations was extremely high and reflected the latest research and application experiences.

Compared to earlier editions, a much higher number of papers were presented on fault seals in carbonates. This reflects

the increased research efforts during the last five years, aimed at understanding the mechanisms of faulting and fault rock formation in carbonate lithologies. Another much discussed issue was how to translate the complexity of fault zones into easy to apply risking methods. Other presentations focused on laboratory and field investigations, case studies, petroleum trapping, fluid flow, storage and disposal, geophysical methods and geomechanics.

Besides the technical presentations, there was ample room to meet and network with colleagues at the icebreaker reception and the conference dinner, and many were seen in small or large groups taking a walk and enjoying Italian food in town.

It was an absolute honour and pleasure to be co-chair of this inspiring conference, together with Quentin Fisher, and on behalf of the entire technical committee, we would like to thank everyone who made this edition such a success: the EAGE event coordination team, the staff at the conference venue and reception sites; our sponsors (in alphabetical order) Badleys, Chevron, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Petriva, Petroleum Experts, Total, and Wintershall Dea; all session chairs and delegates, but above all our keynote speakers, authors and presenters.

Get your abstract in for the Amsterdam 2020 Conference programme It’s already time to focus on the conference agenda for the next EAGE Annual being held in Amsterdam on 8-12 June 2020 and your opportunity to participate in the programme. The theme of the event is ‘Delivering for the Energy Challenge: today and tomorrow’ and is bound to stimulate numerous discussions on how we can deliver sustainable solutions in line with climate goals whilst meeting the increasing demand for energy and natural resources.

This year you can expect more groundbreaking topics integrated within 14

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over 1300 oral and poster presentations, five forum sessions that bring together industry leaders to discuss the most pressing issues in the field, 17 workshops, three short courses, and four field trips.

Moreover, our exhibition will again be outstanding with more cutting-edge technologies and new special areas focused on geothermal and digitalization interests.

Geoscientists from all over the world will be joining us in Amsterdam to bring the latest perspectives in the geoscience and engineering field. Join us and you

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will find ample opportunities to meet professionals in your field and expand your network as well during our sessions with our communities, such as Women in Geoscience and Engineering, Young Professionals, Decarbonization and Energy Transition, and Artificial Intelligence.

If you want to take part in the programme, this is the moment to review the session topics that can be found on www.

EAGEANNUAL2020.org and to submit an abstract before 15 January 2020.

the leading provider of OBN seismic solutions Booth # 1040 - EAGE LONDON 3-6 JUNE

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A taste of London‌ in Paris!

The opening event for the 2019/2020 season of Local Chapter Paris brought a taste of the EAGE Annual conference in London to the French capital.

petroleum geoscience, so much so that certain applications are now some of the most extensively used tools, e.g., log inversion, horizon picking. However, it

A Paris reprise of EAGE Annual!

Three months after the Annual meeting, the programme organized on 12 September included an overview of the event and highlights from three of the four EAGE Special Interest Communities, kindly sponsored by Schlumberger.

The first talk by Henri Blondelle walked the audience through the updates in the artificial intelligence (AI) community. It is recognized that machine learning has matured a lot and rapidly in

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is just the beginning of its journey and more developments are expected that will change the geoscience landscape significantly. Machine learning is the first step towards AI but is also a brick in the larger process of technological and organizational change. The E&P sector has been using data for decisions for a long time and has gained plenty of experience of probabilized information.

Going forward, the new generation of geoscientists will build on this heritage

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and will be even more skilled to work with both statistical and physical models, with collaborative processes and AI driving the transition.

Milena Marjanovic then spoke about the EAGE Women in Geoscience & Engineering (WGE) community and the face-to-face meetings organized for the first time at the EAGE Annual within the mentoring programme. This year mentoring reached a new phase. After being introduced by the WGE group in the form of e-mentoring, a more ambitious version with the option for face-to-face meetings was proposed. Marjanovic also focused on the important role that the WGE network plays in facilitating advice among community members, sharing career opportunities and exchanging guidance on career development, and ultimately supporting the retention of women in STEM. Jean-Charles Ferran then gave an enthusiastic report on the Decarbonization & Energy Transition (DET) community. The group was founded earlier this year and organized a first special session at the EAGE Annual in London covering a broad spectrum of topics, local case studies and a roadmap towards decarbonization and zero emissions relying on CCS and energy efficiency. The new DET community now has a formal committee and, after a kick-off meeting in September, will be active on LinkedIn, at focused events and through collaboration with other groups.

Overall, the event brought together several returning members and also new participants who were keen to connect with the Local Chapter for the first time.

LC Paris has been operating for one year and the positive feedback confirmed its the value of continuing to serve the local community. For the 2019/2020 season it also plans to develop some new ideas and cooperation with local stakeholders.

To learn more and follow updates, join the LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/eage-local-chapterparis/.

Revealing Possibilities shearwatergeo.com

INDUSTRY NEWS

EAGE NEWS

Discussing geostatistical advances in the birthplace of the Renaissance Dario Grana (University of Wyoming) and Jo Eidsvik (NTNU) report on the Fourth EAGE Petroleum Geostatistics Conference, held on 2-6 September in Florence, Italy.

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Technology

Geostatisticians getting ready for a talk in the Auditorium al Duomo.

Some 170 geoscientists gathered in Florence, birthplace of the Renaissance, for the Fourth EAGE Petroleum Geostatistics Conference. Our venue was the Auditorium al Duomo, just a minute walk from the Duomo Cathedral with a terracotta-tiled dome engineered by Brunelleschi and a bell tower by Giotto.

Coincidentally, this year marks the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death.

Following a well-known random path geostatistical process, Florence was selected as the 2019 European event

Clearly Better. shearwatergeo.com

Poster sessions sparked fruitful discussions among the many participants.

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location. This path originated in Toulouse, France, in 1999, and continued in Cascais, Portugal, in 2007 and Biarritz, France, in 2015. Now the conference has committed to a four yearly event, a sort of Olympic Games of Geostatistics, but the stochasticity regarding venue location has been preserved, leading to the random choice of Florence this year.

Posterior analysis does reveal a strong positive correlation between the geographical coordinates of the conference location and those of the hometown of at least one of the technical committee chairs. The same analysis also shows a strong negative correlation between the latitude of the conference locations and the latitude of the institutions of the non-native committee members. But it is common in geostatistics to find spurious correlations, and this must be one of those.

The conference was well attended, with an increase of 25% compared with the 2015 edition. All the continents (28 countries) were represented, with the majority of the participants coming from Norway and France, confirming the strong petroleum geostatistics tradition of these countries but also showing the popularity of the field in the worldwide

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geoscience community. Participants were equally distributed between academia, industry, and service companies, which allowed constructive interactions to better understand research trends and grand challenges.

Geostatistics is a dynamic discipline that aims to build spatial models of the subsurface by integrating geological knowledge, geophysical data and statistical algorithms. The results of geostatistical studies are typically achieved by combining rigorous mathematical and statistical theory with practical aspects of geoscience and engineering applications. As Galileo said, ‘To understand nature, you must understand the language in which it is written, the language of mathematics’. Because of its intrinsic inter-disciplinary component, geostatisticians carefully follow recent developments in a large variety of disciplines. It was not surprising that the conference reflected this trend showing an increasing interest in machine learning as well as the more traditional topics such as stochastic spatial simulations, inverse problems and data assimilation.

The technical programme included two keynote talks, 52 oral presentations, and 56 posters. Overall, the technical committee was impressed by the quality of the submissions. All the expanded abstracts are available on www.earthdoc. org. The programme was subdivided into thematical sessions spanning over three and a half days. Posters that were presented by the authors during the coffee breaks also gathered a large crowd during the lunch breaks.

The first day was mostly focused on geomodelling and included new advances in traditional and emerging geostatistics topics such as multi-point geostatistics, object modelling, and process-based modelling, aiming to face challenges like basin modelling, unstructured grids, and fault distributions. The

EAGE NEWS

group discussion at the end of the day highlighted the main challenges and the open research questions: identifying the sources of uncertainty and their effect on the model predictions. Interesting discussions also brought up the need to integrate geological information in the statistical models to mimic shapes and distributions of geobodies and their natural continuity.

The second day was mainly dedicated to reservoir characterization methods for the prediction of facies and petrophysical properties using geophysical data. The day started with keynote speaker Dr Pierre Thore from Total.

He provided a detailed overview of seismic inversion methods, focusing on statistical approaches and highlighting the challenges in the assumptions associated with the prior model as well as the band-limited nature of geophysical data.

The afternoon sessions showed that the predominant approach to inverse problems is the Bayesian method, which seems to be the natural framework to assess uncertainty in model predictions.

Ongoing research projects focus on prediction and sampling methods for spatially dependent variables. Several presentations compared classical Bayesian methods to more recent machine learning algorithms. The discussion inevitably focused on the value of measured data in model conditioning and predictions, the need for validation tools, and reliable uncertainty quantification methods.

The third day presentations covered mainly static and dynamic reservoir modelling. Keynote speaker Dr Vasily Demyanov from Heriot-Watt University, discussed recent advances and challenges in integrating machine learning

algorithms in reservoir characterization. Deep learning methods have been applied to several modelling problems at different scales, from digital rock physics to history matching. During

Many posters as well as oral presentations included real datasets but ongoing research does often not focus on challenges that practitioners face in their projects and we are still far from a full

Attendees at the conference dinner in the panoramic Grand Hotel Gablioni, with spectacular views of the Duomo.

the day, approaches in ensemble-based filtering and smoothing were also presented, as well as new ideas along the lines of Bayesian evidential learning and neural networks. The discussion again came back to the dichotomy between physical models and statistical learning algorithms, and touched on several challenges, including prior geological information and uncertainty underestimation.

The last day included presentations on advances in geostatistics for both discrete and continuous models, for instance, methods integrating stochastic partial differential equations for scalable computing. Several of the presentations showed interesting field cases, demonstrating the applicability of geostatistics as an important building block in larger geoscience modelling, where diverse data must be integrated in a realistic manner.

integration of the geoscience disciplines.

As Leonardo Da Vinci said, ‘He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast’. However, practice allows mistakes in the theory to be understood, and we should learn from our mistakes and our successes.

For the future, there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic. The conference showed a great synergy between senior and younger scientists, as well as between academia and private sector. New research directions have been identified and several young researchers showed interest in geostatistics. The next appointment will be for the fifth edition of the conference in 2023. As in the past, the venue will be determined following a geostatistical random path.

The EAGE Student Fund supports activities that help bridge the gap between the university and professional environments for students of geosciences and engineering. Thanks to our Student Fund contributors we can continue supporting students around the globe and through this securing the future of our industry. For more information to become a Student Fund contributor, please visit eagestudentfund.org or contact us at students@eage.org.

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What is the world coming to?

At the risk of death by a thousand tweets, likely many more, the is an easy target. It may actually underestimate the accelerating Crosstalk column is daring to take issue with the Greta Thunberg technology and lifestyle responses to perceived global climate phenomenon, particular the rhetoric employed. The Swedish change being adopted by industries (including oil and gas) and climate activist is the inspiration for worldwide demonstrations, countries mainly in the developed world. Be that as it may, to go acclaimed by some sections of the ruling classes and a recipient of further and threaten everyone with mass extinction is not helpful.

Nowhere in Thunberg’s speech is there any advice, practical or numerous international awards, but not so far a Nobel Peace prize winner (which would be in the footsteps of the now somewhat forotherwise, as to what steps need to be taken to save ourselves, gotten former US Vice President Al Gore, who was the 2007 joint nor any realistic benchmark to mark progress or otherwise. It is winner with the IPCC - International Panel on Climate Change). fear-mongering that comes straight from the playbook of ‘end of Thunberg has been lauded for drawing attention to the funereal the world’ prophets of gloom that have popped up in every century pace in which governments have been addressing an impending throughout history. global warming crisis. The much-quoted speech at the United The majority of the schoolchildren who come out in support of Nations was indeed remarkable.

Thunberg’s angry talk of ‘betrayal’ of young people are unlikely to Her presence on the podium with free reign to berate every have a serious understanding of either the complex science behind nation in the world must count as one of the greatest public relaher dire predictions or the commitment needed to mitigate them. It is suffice for her to state that ‘for more than 30 years the science tions coups of all time. She did not waste the opportunity, earning worldwide coverage and providing the context for the spate of prehas been crystal clear … and the politics and solutions needed are dominantly youthful protests and demonstranowhere in sight.’ Discussion over.

To deny that we face a looming crisis is of tions that have occurred and continue to disrupt ‘To go further and daily life in some cities of the developed world. course just plain stupid. It is perhaps arguable The problem is that the apocalyptic terms threaten everyone with that catastrophizing is the only way to open in which Thunberg frames her message distort the so-called Overton Window of conventional mass extinction is even further the public discourse on the nature politics; that is to say broadening the range of not helpful.’ of climate change and what should be done, policies that a politician can recommend withespecially among the younger generation. No out appearing too extreme to gain or keep pubone up to now has been given the world stage to predict human lic office in a particular climate of public opinion. On that score, extinction as a result of climate change. Thunberg’s address was Thunberg and her cohorts may have had some effect in boosting short, emotional and rich in soundbites to provide a rallying call green agendas, for example, for Democratic candidates in the US for many around the world. Her youth, temerity and self-declared 2020 presidential election.

Asperger’s ‘superpower’ have actually served in her favour. They That said, if scientific investigation is to be the arbiter of how combine to make her bullet-proof against trolling ‘haters’. She is deeply we are in trouble, then it must be allowed to do its work. fully entitled to treat the condescending reaction to her UN speech The direction, funding and freedom of research is liable to be by presidents Trump and Putin as badges of honour. skewed by globally publicized cataclysmic interpretations of what Nonetheless those who have enabled such an effective megis in store for us. aphone for Thunberg need to be held to some account. Scolding The climate activist gospel references for its legitimacy the those in power for not recognizing the urgency of our predicament pronouncements of the IPCC, the body established in 1988 by the

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World Meteorological Society and the UN Environmental Proclimate change is becoming increasingly politicized. The activists gramme ‘to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the are turning the issue into a fundamental question about what kind of society we want to inhabit in the future. current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts’. This makes total sense.

That may not be a bad thing. It picks up on some numerous IPCC reports are widely regarded as the most authoritative availaundercurrents that are eroding liberal democracies and their ability to handle the big issues. The Extinction Rebellion (XR) has so far ble knowledge base, said to be a ‘consensus’ of scientific opinion.

What we do know is that the IPCC output will always be a been very effectively managed by veteran protestors as a non-viowork in progress. It is now in its sixth cycle of refinement since lent movement. Even so, to draw out such significant numbers on to the streets means it is tapping into a rich vein of frustration. Not the inaugural report in 1990. During this time the tone has become such a surprise is that the home of XR is Britain where government notably more alarmist, the possible role of climatic cycles in earth and people are in total disarray over Brexit. warming increasingly downplayed. Like any scientific work the One can speculate that XR is symptomatic of a disconnect panel’s pronouncements should be open to continual study and between electorates and government and of individual alienation appraisal, even to opposing hypotheses. Yet, panel members would in a troubling world of global economic uncertainty, population be scarcely human if they did not react to the pressure of world migrations, religious strife, wealth inequality, job insecurity, digital expectations in what is the preparation of a climate change bible. revolution concerns, identity politics, etc, etc. Thunberg’s thunderIt does not require naysayers to point out that the scenarios ous words do not provide a roadmap as to where we go from here, portrayed in the reports, however well researched, case studied apart from stating that the 50% reduction in CO2 in 10 years is not and modelled, cannot be definitive. The conclusions are a look enough and vaguely warning about the belief in eternal economic into the future and have to speculate on the interaction of a myriad growth. of factors by no means all understood. Putting a timescale on the A recent special climate change issue of The Economist elegantincrease of CO2 in the atmosphere has to involve a lot of guessly framed the challenge ahead to meet the target work because there are so many unknowables between now and any specified date. Ironically, ‘Scientific investigation… of CO2 emission reduction posited by the IPCC but not on the Thunberg schedule. It requires climate change activists should welcome open must be allowed to ‘reversing the 20-fold increase in emissions the inquiry to see if there are solutions other than do its work’ 20th Century set in train and doing so at twice the drastic reduction of CO2 emissions that they the speed. Replacing everything that burns gas are calling for. or oil or coal to heat a home or drive a generator or turn a wheel.

Guus Berkhout, former professor of geophysics at Delft UniRebuilding all the steelworks; refashioning the cement works; versity, founder of the Delphi Consortim, and Honorary Member recycling or replacing the plastics; transforming farms on all conof EAGE, is currently being pilloried for writing to the UN Sectinents. And doing it all while expanding the economy enough to retary-General Antonio Guterres in September on behalf of ‘500 meet the needs and desires of a population which may well be half knowledgeable and experienced scientists and professionals in again as large by 2100 as it is today.’ climate and related fields’ with a ‘European Climate Declaration’.

Unsurprisingly The Economist still keeps faith in the capitalist It provocatively denies there is a climate emergency and calls into system to deliver, as do conservatives generally (if they actually question the scientific justification, exorbitant cost and fairness admit to a serious problem, e.g., not President Trump). Climate to all countries of proposed CO2 mitigation measures. It hardly activists see the need for interventionist government, grass roots got a mention in mainstream media and was widely dismissed by community participation and some as yet unarticulated ‘environenvironmentalist organizations that pointed to some well-known mental justice’ so that the most vulnerable in the under-developed ‘denier’ organizations and individuals as signatories. Prof Berkworld do not suffer from the stringent solutions adopted by the hout himself, it was noted, worked at one time for an oil company more wealthy nations. A noted difficulty in sharing out the pain (Shell) immediately disqualifying him from unbiased opinion. is that major ‘polluters’ such as China, the US under its current Discredited or not, there was one observation in the declaraadministration, India and Russia have been conspicuously quiet on tion that seemed indisputably sensible: ‘Scientists should openly emission reduction programmes. address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of In her favour, Thunberg is helping to expose the fault lines global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the between left and right, rich and poor nations lurking behind the clireal benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global mate change conversation that need to be addressed. But conjuring warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of up a dystopian nightmare does not provide solutions. It may indeed mitigation.’ be counter-productive tempting people to adopt a ‘que será será’ It is a matter of opinion whether the science community is attitude. Such surrender must not be allowed to happen, however taking sufficient responsibility for the firestorm they have helped to unclear the path ahead. create. What is crystal clear, to use Thunberg’s phraseology, is that

Views expressed in Crosstalk are solely those of the author, who can be contacted at andrew@andrewmcbarnet.com.

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Polarcus shoots wide azimuth survey

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CGG ups its machine learning offer

TGS claims ‘game changing’ advance in reservoir characterization and data acquisition TGS have launched innovations in reservoir characterization, data acquisition and processing as the company prepares to report third quarter revenues of $277 million.

Firstly, TGS and Quantico Energy Solutions have launched a collaboration to improve seismic data, AI-based well logs, and AI-based seismic inversion.

The joint solution addresses the critical challenges in earth modelling workflows, such as insufficient seismic and log data, lengthy lead-in times, and difficulties mapping advanced geomechanical and petrophysical attributes.

TGS will leverage its data library of seismic and well log data. In addition, the collaboration will feature TGS’s Analytics Ready LAS (ARLAS) solution, which utilizes machine learning algorithms to predict missing curve responses in today’s digital well log data. The solution enables TGS to predict curve response in five key curve types: gamma, resistivity, density, neutron and sonic. Accuracy rates are well into the high 90% range for most curves, TGS said.

Quantico will leverage its QRes solution, which combines physics-based approaches with machine learning to map the subsurface within a fraction of the time as conventional inversion software.

QRes delivers earth model properties in significantly higher resolution than available today, and can deliver advanced

attributes such as porosity, water saturation, compressive strength and wellbore stability curves that historically have been challenging to ascertain from seismic inversions.

‘By integrating QRes with TGS’s data library and the ARLAS solution, oil companies will have access to the most comprehensive geoscience data and technologically-advanced AI solutions to deliver maximum production with faster cycle times,’ said TGS. Barry Zhang, CEO of Quantico, said: ‘The pace of innovation in subsurface AI and digitalization at E&P customers is accelerating at a speed that’s been seldom experienced in our industry. The joint inversion solution between TGS and Quantico exemplifies how collaboration between AI companies can unlock immediate, game-changing advancement in reservoir characterization.’

Secondly, TGS has announced the same-day delivery of acquired seismic data by successfully utilizing Bluware Teleport, a proprietary data compression technology enabling cost-effective transmission of seismic data via low bandwidth satellite links.

‘Operating in remote offshore locations, the physical shipment of seismic data from vessels to onshore facilities is an operational bottleneck that increases health, safety and environment exposure FIRST

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and causes delays in data processing,’ TGS said.

During a recent test in Argentina, TGS was able to receive and process data to ultra-fast track pre-stack time migration (PSTM) products within 24 hours. The PSTM product allowed for basin definition and a reorientation of the survey based on geological features observed. It also allowed for more in-depth acquisition quality control and an early identification of the velocity model and parameter selection for processing.

Thirdly, TGS is about to release preliminary imaging results for the Amendment Phase 1 FWI node survey in the US Gulf of Mexico (GoM) which is the first survey of that size to acquire a minimum of 40 km ultra-long offsets. The project, acquired in partnership with Schlumberger, is also the largest deepwater node survey ever delivered in the GoM. Fourthly, In Europe, TGS has completed the first major multi-client OBN project in the region, which was carried out in co-operation with Axxis Geo Solutions.

TGS said that it expects to report third quarter segment revenues of $277 million.

Kristian Johansen, CEO of TGS said: ‘We are now extremely pleased to be able to deliver our best Q3 sales performance ever, the second-best quarter in TGS history.’

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PGS releases Ghana megasurvey data PGS has released the first data from its 24,000 km2 megasurvey offshore Ghana extending from the prolific Tano Basin in the west, through the Salt Pond Basin and into the Keta Basin in the east.

The Ghana MegaSurvey covers the proven Upper Cretaceous oil play in the Jubilee and TEN fields and will delineate multiple undrilled stacked turbidite channel and fan systems. It highlights the excellent structural and stratigraphic trapping potential in the Ghanaian offshore.

The regional nature of the data allows the tectonic and basin development to be fully explored leading to a greater understanding of existing and potential petroleum systems, said PGS. The survey completes PGS’ coverage of the West African Transform Margin from the Ivory Coast to Nigeria. The West African Transform Margin is a large tectonically constrained area bounded by a series of major fracture zones formed

during the separation of the African and American continents in the Late Jurassic to Cretaceous period.

Gaining a regional understanding of the complex tectonostratigraphic evolution of the area is key to understanding the basin development and prospectivity, said PGS. The Ghana MegaSurvey now completes the the company’s coverage of the West Africa Transform Margin, providing an excellent foundation for successful exploration.

Octio Gravitude completes seabed survey in the Barents Sea

The vessel Topaz Tiamat is carrying out gravimetric monitoring for Equinor.

Octio Gravitude has completed a threeweek seabed survey of the Snøhvit, Albatross and Askeladd gas fields in the Barents Sea operated by Equinor.

The survey used gWatch technology, which evaluates the quality of both gravity

and seafloor depth data by comparing the results of repeated measurements performed at the same locations.

The so-called repeatability parameter indicates how similar such independent measurements are to each other, and pro-

vides a robust means to evaluate the precision of individual measurements. At the end of this year’s survey at Snøhvit, Albatross and Askeladd, the repeatability has been measured to be 0.8 µGal and 2.2 mm respectively for gravity and depth data.

‘These are both excellent results. In particular, the repeatability in gravity is the best on an offshore survey to date, even when compared with results after final processing and reporting in the previous cases,’ said Octio Gravitude.

Equinor has recently awarded Octio Gravitude an exclusive contract for gravimetric monitoring on the Norwegian continental shelf. The contract has an initial duration of five years, with an option of extension to an additional four years.

The operation was performed from the survey and light construction vessel Topaz Tiamat operated by MMT and Reach Subsea.

Fugro completes deepwater surveys in Gulf of Mexico Fugro has completed several deepwater geophysical surveys in the Gulf of Mexico for Shell.

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ical hazards ahead of planned drilling activities.

Fugro deployed a Hugin autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) from its purpose-built survey vessel, the Fugro Brasilis.

The Hugin AUV is depth-rated to 3000 m and equipped with multi-beam echosounder, side scan sonar and sub-bottom profiling sensors. These enabled Fugro to acquire

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critical seabed information over the project despite the challenging water depths. Fugro also used a mix of onboard and in-house processing resources to meet an accelerated interpretation and reporting schedule.

The current work for Shell began in July and finished in early October. The completed project totals over 8500 km of survey data.

INDUSTRY NEWS

US unlocks areas of California for oil and gas development The Trump administration is opening up more than 720,000 acres of federal land in California for oil and gas development, ending a five-year moratorium on leases in the state.

The US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management has approved a resource management plan for the oil-rich Central California coastal region to issue 14 leases in Monterey and San Benito counties, which were suspended amid a legal challenge by two conservation groups six years ago.

The BLM has not held a lease sale in California since 2013, when a judge ruled that the agency illegally issued leases without analysing the environmental impact of fracking.

Meanwhile, the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is offering 78 million acres for a region-wide lease sale scheduled for March 2020. The sale would

include all available unleased areas in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico that are not subject to Congressional moratorium.

The Gulf of Mexico Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), covering about 160 million acres, is estimated to contain about 48 billion barrels of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and 141 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered technically recoverable natural gas.

Lease Sale 254, scheduled to be livestreamed from New Orleans, will be the sixth out of ten offshore sale under the 2017-2022 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Programme. It will include approx.

14,585 unleased blocks.

Fiscal terms include a 12.5% royalty rate for leases in less than 200 m of water depth, and 18.75% for all other leases.

Polarcus shoots wide-azimuth survey in the Gulf of Mexico Polarcus is shooting a four-month multi-vessel wide-azimuth project for WesternGeco in the Salina del Istmo Basin in the Gulf of Mexico. The project incorporates two Polarcus streamer vessels plus two source vessels.

This is the first Polarcus project working for WesternGeco since the divestment

Polarcus is in Salina del Istmo Basin.

of its marine acquisition business in 2018.

The seismic data acquired by Polarcus will be transferred via satellite directly to the client using the Polarcus Cirrus data solution. This provides the client with near real-time access to high fidelity seismic data allowing for faster, more informed project decisions and contributing to shortening the exploration cycle.

Polarcus CEO Duncan Eley said: ‘This will be our second commercial project using the Polarcus Cirrus data transfer and cloud processing offering, helping our clients to shorten the exploration cycle by giving realtime access to their seismic survey data.’

Details of the project emerged after Polarcus announced on June 3 that it had won a wide-azimuth project offshore the Americas, comprising eight vessel months.

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INDUSTRY NEWS

PGS expands huge survey offshore Malaysia

PGS is acquiring another 7400 km2.

PGS is acquiring phase five of the Sabah multi-client survey offshore Malaysia, one of the largest 3D projects in the world.

The company is acquiring another 7400 2 km of prefunded multisensor broadband using the Titan-class flagship Ramform Hyperion. The vessel is towing 16 streamers with an 8100 x 100 m sensor spread, and a triple-source configuration.

Sabah phase five will cover the inboard trend of the Sabah basin, which comprises Miocene-Pliocene turbidite complexes where reservoirs are trapped in complex

fold and thrust structures as well as stratigraphic settings.

Many discoveries have been made on this structural trend and the addition of this new multi-sensor dataset will help to derisk reservoir presence and variability, said PGS. It will also provide a fully AVO-compliant dataset with better images of the complex geology to enable high-end QI workflows, it added.

Once complete, this survey will bring the footprint of the Sabah MC3D to approximately 47,000 km2.

The first data, including coverage blocks that are currently open for licensing, will be available in Q2 2020.

Meanwhile, PGS has completed two PGS 3D GeoStreamer surveys totalling 10,500 km2 over frontier acreage on the Trøndelag platform, including the Helgeland and Froan basins in the Norwegian Sea. Two full broadband 3D GeoStreamer acquisitions were carried out by Sanco Swift and Ramform Vanguard this sum-

mer, using an efficient high-density triple-source design. They targeted a large and underexplored area close to existing infrastructure.

‘PGS GeoStreamer technology is beneficial in this area for seismic velocity estimation, better imaging of the Jurassic targets, and the presalt potential in the Permian. This will allow detailed prospect evaluation and exploration for new plays,’ said PGS. Fast track data is expected by December 2019. PSDM and velocity model building with Complete Wavefield Imaging of the GeoStreamer data are due July 2020.

Finally, PGS has delivered a fast-track post-stack time migration a few weeks after completing a 3D survey offshore the Republic of Guinea in West Africa.

Early images from the latest PGS Multi-Client3D survey in the MSGBC Basin will give explorers a first look at the shallow and deep targets within the prospective blocks A4 and A5.

Exploration round-up Equinor has been awarded exploration acreage in the Northern Carnarvon Basin offshore Western Australia. WA-542-P is located west of the recent Dorado oil discovery. The block covers 4815 km2 and lies about 100 km from the Australian coast. The water depth ranges from 80 to 350 m. The work programme for the block includes geological and geophysical studies, reprocessing of seismic data and new 3D seismic acquisition.

The BP-operated Yakaar-2 appraisal well offshore Senegal has encountered approx. 30 m of net gas pay in a similar high-quality Cenomanian reservoir to the Yakaar-1 exploration well. Yakaar-2 was drilled approx. 9 km from Yakaar-1 and proved up the southern extension of the field.

Equinor has been granted consent to drill an exploration well for CO2 verification in Block 31/5 in the North Sea. Well 31/5-7, known as ‘Eon’, aims to

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verify whether subsea strata can be used for CO2 injection and storage. The well is to be drilled west of the Troll field in the North Sea. Drilling is scheduled to begin in mid-October 2019.

MOL Norge has won consent to drill exploration well 25/8-19 S in production licence PL 820 in the central North Sea, west of Haugesund. The well will be drilled to test a prospect named ‘Evra/ Iving’. Water depth at the site is 125 m.

ExxonMobil has made an oil discovery on the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana at the Tripletail-1 well in the Turbot area. The discovery adds to 6 billion oil-equivalent barrels found at the Stabroek Block near by. Tripletail-1, drilled in 2000 m of water, encountered 33 m of high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoir.

Equinor has won consent to drill Block 7219/9 in the Barents Sea 22 km south-southeast of the Johan Castberg field.

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PGNiG Upstream Norway has been granted a drilling permit for appraisal well 6507/5-9 A in production licence PL 838. The well will be drilled 4.5 km southeast of the Skarv field in the Norwegian Sea. DNO North Sea has been granted a drilling permit for appraisal well 6507/716 in production licence PL 888 in the Norwegian Sea about 3 km west of the Heidrun field.

Equinor has won consent to drill exploration well 32/4-3 S in production licence PL 921 in the North Sea. The well will be drilled to test a prospect named ‘Gladsheim’. Water depth is 292 m.

Equinor has won consent to drill a sidetrack in exploration well 35/11-23 in production licence PL 090 in the North Sea. The well is being drilled to test a prospect named of ‘Echino Sør’. Water depth 352 m.

Schlumberger, Chevron and Microsoft explore geophysical innovation Schlumberger, Chevron and Microsoft are collaborating to accelerate creation of innovative petrotechnical and digital technologies that could enhance management of geophysical data.

The three companies will work together to build Azure-native applications in the DELFI cognitive E&P environment initially for Chevron, which will enable companies to process, visualize, interpret and ultimately obtain meaningful insights from multiple data sources.

DELFI is a cloud-based environment providing seamless E&P software technology across exploration, development, production and midstream. Chevron and Schlumberger will combine their expertise and resources to accelerate the deployment of DELFI solutions in Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service, with support and guidance from Microsoft. The parties will ensure the software developments meet the latest standards in terms of security, performance, release management, and are compatible with the Open Subsurface Data Universe (OSDU) Data Platform.

The collaboration will be completed in three phases starting with the deployment of the Petrotechnical Suite in the DELFI environment, followed by the development of cloud-native applications on Azure, and the co-innovation of a suite of cognitive computing native capabilities across the E&P value chain tailored to Chevron’s objectives.

Olivier Le Peuch, chief executive officer, Schlumberger, said: ‘Combining the expertise of these three global enterprises creates vastly improved and digitally enabled petrotechnical workflows.

Never before has our industry seen a collaboration of this kind, and of this scale.’

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said: ‘There is an enormous opportunity to bring the latest cloud and AI technology to the energy sector and accelerate the industry’s digital transformation. Our partnership applies the power of Azure to unlock new AI-driven insights that will help to address some of the industry’s

most important energy challenges, including sustainability.’

Joseph C. Geagea, executive vice president, technology, projects and services, Chevron, said: ‘We believe this industry-first advancement will dramatically accelerate

the speed with which we can analyse data to generate new exploration opportunities and bring prospects to development more quickly and with more certainty. It will pull vast quantities of information into a single source amplifying our use of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing built on an open data ecosystem.’

BGP and Sercel bid to capture OBN market BGP is bidding to become a big player in the ocean bottom seismic market after it teamed up with Sercel to launch GPR, a new ocean bottom node (OBN) leveraging Sercel’s QuietSeis broadband digital sensor technology for OBN exploration and field development.

GPR nodes can be deployed by either remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) or node-on-a-rope (NOAR). Its all-in-one compact design incorporates an optional acoustic transponder to optimize operations and the 3C MEMS and hydrophone to record high-fidelity data.

Pascal Rouiller, Sercel CEO, said that BGP also provided valuable input from the field that drove the design of GPR. ‘As a long-term partner, we are delighted to have had the opportunity to collaborate

Sercel’s WiNG system.

with BGP on this innovative node-based GPR solution for seabed seismic exploration and field development. Sercel’s stateof-the-art technology and manufacturing excellence are key factors in helping to position BGP among the major players

in the ocean bottom node acquisition market.’

Meanwhile, Sercel has launched WiNG, a fully integrated wireless nodal acquisition system, that leverages the company’s QuietSeis solution.

INDUSTRY NEWS

Equinor makes big move into UK wind farms The UK has awarded Equinor and its partner SSE contracts to develop three large-scale offshore wind projects in the Dogger Bank region of the North Sea.

sent a game-changer for our offshore wind business. A full-scale development of Dogger Bank will constitute an industrial wind hub in the heart of the North Sea,

The Dogger Bank project will be a game changer for offshore wind in the UK.

This will be the world’s biggest offshore wind farm development with a total installed capacity of 3.6 GW. The projects are expected to produce some 5% of UK energy needs. The Dogger Bank wind farm will consist of three projects, Creyke Beck A, Creyke Beck B and Teesside A. The clearing prices for the projects are £39.650 per MWh for Creyke Beck A and £41.611 per MWh for the Creyke Beck B and the Teesside A projects. The contracts offer a fixed price for the first 15 years of operation.

‘The successful bids for the world’s largest offshore wind development repre-

playing a major role in the UK’s ambitions for offshore wind and supporting the net zero ambition. Excellent wind speeds, shallow waters and scale make Dogger Bank well positioned to deliver low cost renewable electricity to UK homes and businesses,’ said Eldar Sætre, CEO of Equinor.

Executive vice president for New Energy Solutions in Equinor, Pål Eitrheim, said: ‘Dogger Bank, together with the recent award for Empire Wind in the US, positions Equinor as an offshore wind major. These projects provide economies of scale and synergies, making us an even stronger competitive force in

offshore wind globally. We expect the cost reductions obtained by the industry through continuous project execution and technological innovation will contribute to continued value enhancement.’

The Dogger Bank projects are estimated to trigger a total capital investment of approx. $9 billion between 2020 and 2026. The joint venture will be seeking funding for the Dogger Bank development. A preliminary market sounding of potential lenders has demonstrated ‘very strong interest’ for UK offshore wind assets.

The partners are planning for a final investment decision for the first project during 2020 and first power generation is planned for 2023. Further phases of the Dogger Bank project will be developed thereafter.

The awards were given under the Contracts for Difference (CfD) competitive auction held by National Grid on behalf of the UK’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), which has commissioned 6 GW of offshore wind to reach a target of 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030.

Dogger Bank is located more than 130 km east of the Yorkshire Coast in the UK North Sea in water depths from 20 m to 35 m. Each project will have an installed capacity of 1.2 GW. The Wind Turbine Generators (WTG) are expected to be 10+ MW, installed on monopile foundations. The transmission system will be High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) due to the long distance to the onshore grid connection point. This will be the first use of HVDC for offshore wind in the UK.

Polarcus wins project offshore Australia Polarcus has secured ‘high industry prefunding’ for a multi-client project offshore Australia.

The project will commence in Q4 2019 with an approximate duration of two months.

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Meanwhile, the company’s latest vessel acquisition figures show that utilization of 83% in the third quarter of 2019 (compared with 86% in Q3 2018 and 87% for the full year 2018) was entirely devoted to contract surveys. Eight per

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cent of vessel time in Q3 was spent on transit, compared to 12% in Q3 2018 and 10% for the full year 2018. Six per cent of vessel time was in yard compared with 0% in Q3 2018 and 1% for full year 2018.

INDUSTRY NEWS

PGS reprocesses 3000 km2 of data in the Gulf of Mexico Newly reprocessed 3D streamer and OBC data covering 3000 km2 have been added to PGS’ Flex Vision dataset across the Flex Trend in the Gulf of Mexico, now covering 7000 km2.

South Timbalier, Ship Shoal, Grand Isle, Ewing Bank and the Northern part of Green Canyon are now reprocessed providing clearer images of existing fields and proven undeveloped reserves.

Flex Vision provides tailored images using Kirchhoff for shallower targets, delivering broad frequency content and reliable amplitudes, and RTM for regional understanding and to unlock deeper plays.

‘Due to oilfield infrastructure, new seismic acquisition in the area is difficult and expensive, so rejuvenation of legacy seismic data is a cost-effective solution,’ said PGS. ‘To exploit nearfield suprasalt reserves, high-resolution seismic images are needed to accurately position existing and new plays. Prolonging the life of subsalt fields, such as Mahogany and Hickory, is only possible by improving models and discovering deeper prospects from superior seismic images such as those offered by Flex Vision.’

The data, remastered from field tape with full source and receiver deghosting applied, creates a broadband dataset. PGS’ dual convolutional and wavefield-modelled surface-relate demultiple flow uses Separated Wavefield Imaging (SWIM) to both attenuate the complex multiples associated with the Flex Trend and accurately image the shallow water bottom.

A full waveform inversion (FWI) approach was used to build the sediment velocity model. The salt velocity model was built using innovative salt modelling concepts based on a geological understanding of the salt tectonics associated with the extensional-compressional regime characterized by the Roho basins.

Based on this concept, salt scenario testing used a lean salt approach, which dramatically improves the subsalt imaging. After tomography, the subsalt sediment velocities were calibrated using FIRST

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well information. Roho basins kinematically balance up-dip extension and down dip compression along low angle detachments. Individual Roho systems may have different kinematic directions while interfering with neighbouring basins and result in complex salt geometries along their fringes. The complexity of salt bodies results from multiple deformation events between salt flow and extensional/compressional movement in the basins. This interpretation revises the role of salt keels replacing massive salt feeders with welded salt delivery systems.

The complex salt geometry was competently handled using an accurate velocity model and reverse time migration (RTM) to reveal structures in the subsalt. Mode converted waves interfere with the imaged subsalt producing sands, and were attenuated by modelling and migrating the mode conversions and adaptively subtracting them from the image. A structural version of the RTM is available for mapping and understanding the deep structures.

The accurate velocity model was used in the migration to produce broadband Kirchhoff prestack depth domain images and a 35 Hz RTM volume. The Kirchhoff data provides a high-resolution shallow section revealing subtle shallow stratigraphic and structural traps as well as shallow gas hazards. The imaging is AVO compliant with available angle stacks and migrated gathers for reservoir characterization. The 35 Hz RTM volume images the Miocene play fairways and potential in the Lower Tertiary.

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INDUSTRY NEWS

RPS buys Reservoir Imaging for $5 million RPS has acquired the UK software and technology consultancy Reservoir Imaging Ltd (RIL) for £4 million ($4.9 million). It said the transaction would help it to deliver improved seismic data acquisition surveys.

RIL, based in Edinburgh, Scotland, delivers services using its proprietary developed Osprey Software Suite to support the planning and acquisition of offshore marine seismic surveys. This includes managing seismic interference to avoid timeshare and reducing the likelihood of aborted lines or costly reacquisition.

John Tompson, chief executive for energy, RPS, said: ‘As uncertainty continues around the oil price, the industry is exploring new ways to deliver improved

returns. To meet an increasing demand for cost-effective, efficient, accurate and safe seismic data acquisition surveys means there is a corresponding rise in demand for the software and field specialists to run it. RPS appreciates the rapidly changing market conditions where data and technology are key business drivers — we therefore see RIL as an intelligent and complementary addition to the business.

‘In energy, the need is for data-driven decision making. RIL is known for its expertise using technology and data to enable clients to make sound investment decisions on reserves, further exploration and other factors affecting the commerciality of oil and gas fields. It is a natural fit for our business.’

Chevron sets goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions Chevron has established new goals to reduce net greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity from upstream oil and natural gas.

Emission intensity is the emission rate of greenhouse gas per unit of energy produced. The company intends to lower upstream oil net GHG emission intensity by 5-10% and upstream natural gas net GHG emission intensity by 2-5% from 2016 to 2023. The timing is aligned with stocktake milestones set in the Paris Agreement on climate change.

The GHG emission intensity reduction metrics apply to all upstream Chevron oil and natural gas, whether Chevron has operational control or not.

‘Global demand for energy continues to grow, and we are committed to delivering more energy with less environmental impact,’ said Michael Wirth, Chevron’s chairman and CEO. The new reduction goals build on other actions Chevron is taking to address climate change by lowering the company’s carbon intensity, increasing its use of renewable energy and investing in breakthrough tech30

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nologies. Earlier this year, the company established reduction goals for methane emission intensity and flaring intensity.

Chevron is a member of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative and is helping fund a $1+ billion effort to develop new technologies and businesses to reduce GHG emissions. Chevron has also established a Future Energy venture capital fund to invest in technology to reduce GHG emissions and enable a greater diversity of energy sources.

The company has invested more than $1 billion in carbon capture and storage projects in Australia and Canada which are expected to reduce GHG emissions by about 5 million metric tonnes a year. Chevron is using renewable electricity to power some of its operations in California and Texas.

‘Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a global issue that requires global engagement and action,’ said Wirth. ‘We are taking action, while continuing to deliver the affordable, reliable, ever-cleaner energy that enables human progress.’

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Reservoir Imaging managing director, Keith Watt said: ‘RIL is growing quickly, a significant technology development programme has allowed us to build new service offerings, increasing the scope and scale beyond our traditional 4D services.

The opportunity to access the global reach of RPS provides the company with a fantastic opportunity to expand.’

RIL will join RPS’ Energy Operations team of around 350 exploration, design, project management and advisory specialists. The integration is expected to be completed within six to nine months.

Throughout the transition, the newly combined team will be led by RPS managing director in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Ernest Statton.

Cuadrilla flow tests second UK shale well Cuadrilla is to begin flow testing its second horizontal shale gas well at its hydraulic fracturing site in the north of the UK. The company confirmed that it was continuing to assist the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) on a series of technical studies arising out of a seismic event measuring 2.9ML on the Richter scale, which occurred on 26 August, 2019. A timeframe has not been agreed with the OGA for this work to be completed and hydraulic fracturing will not resume at Preston New Road before current planning permission for fracturing expires at the end of November.

In February, Cuadrilla announced results from flow-testing of the UK’s first ever horizontal shale gas exploration well, which confirmed a high-quality natural gas resource in the Lower Bowland Shale, capable of flowing to surface.

The initial exploration programme also confirmed that the Bowland Shale formation fractures in a way that is typical of an excellent shale gas reservoir. A complex fracture network was generated in the shale and sand injected into the fractures stayed in place during flow back, said Cuadrilla.

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INDUSTRY NEWS

EMGS reports 73% vessel utilization for third quarter

EMGS’ vessel utilization for the third quarter 2019 was 73% compared with 29% for the third quarter of 2018.

In the third quarter of 2019, the company’s vessels were allocated 73% to proprietary work and no time was spent on multi-client projects. In the comparable quarter of 2018, the vessels were allocated 29% to multi-client projects and no time was spent on proprietary work.

EMGS had two vessels on charter and recorded 6 vessel months in the quarter. In the third quarter 2018,

the company also had two vessels on charter.

The Atlantic Guardian commenced a proprietary survey for Pemex in Mexico on 25 July 2019. This survey is continuing. The vessel’s utilization for the third quarter was 66%.

The BOA Thalassa spent the entire third quarter of 2019 acquiring EM data for Petronas in South-East Asia. The vessel’s utilization for the third quarter was 79%.

The company expects to record $6 million in multi-client revenues for the third quarter 2019.

Irish oil companies seek clarification over future exploration Oil companies with assets offshore Ireland are seeking ‘clarifications’ after the country signalled its intention to end fossil fuel exploration and shifts to a carbon-free economy.

Leo Varadkar, the Taoiseach, said that the search for, and extraction of, gas will be permitted for some time. Providence Resources, the Irish based energy company, said that it believes that the phasing out only relates to the issuance of future oil licences and the company presumes that all of the options, licences and leases already in place will be allowed to progress for their full duration. Providence has a large exploration and appraisal portfolio offshore Ireland and the company will be seeking clarification of the 32

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situation through the offices of the Irish Offshore Operators’ Association (IOOA).

Europa Oil and Gas, another company with assets in Ireland, said it would be seeking clarification as to whether its existing assets, including its flagship Inishkea gas prospect, located close to the Corrib gas field in the Slyne Basin, would be affected.

In a statement the IOOA said: ‘We look forward to seeing the full detail of the proposals. Our members remain committed to Ireland’s efforts to transition to renewable energy, however energy security for Ireland is an important part of that process and we will seek a meeting with government in relation to the matter in the coming weeks.’

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AGR builds reservoir model in Norwegian Sea AGR is building a full field reservoir model for OKEA’s Draugen asset in the Norwegian Sea. The AGR project team includes geophysicists, petrophysicists, sedimentologists, geomodellers, reservoir engineers and production engineers.

André Sæthern, AGR’s VP of reservoir management, said: ‘We’ll be applying our in-house expertise to build the model, from its elements up to a history-matched dynamic model, which will be used for forecasting the assets’ production volumes for many years to come.’

AGR has more 20 years’ expertise in supplying technical reservoir and G&G studies in addition to commercial evaluations and asset audits to clients in Norway.

SeaBird wins contracts in Africa and Asia Pacific SeaBird has won a contract to acquire a 2D seismic survey for an international oil and gas company in the Africa region.

The survey was due to commence towards the end of September and was estimated to run for three weeks. The company will be using the vessel Nordic Explorer.

The 2D survey in the Africa region fits well with the previously reported 10,000 km 2D contract in the Australasia region securing back-to-back utilization of the Nordic Explorer in Q4 2019 and for most of Q1 2020.

SeaBird has won also a contract to provide a source vessel for an upcoming OBN project in the Asia Pacific region.

The project is anticipated to commence during Q4 and will have a duration of one to two months. SeaBird will be using the Voyager Explorer for the project.

INDUSTRY NEWS

WesternGeco and IHS Markit form data partnership Schlumberger’s WesternGeco division and IHS Markit have teamed up to make data, technology and expertise available through the Gaia digital subsurface platform.

WesternGeco launched the Gaia platform — powered by the Delfi cognitive E&P environment — to accelerate data discovery, screening and ranking of their clients’ exploration opportunities by providing access to all relevant and licensed data.

IHS Markit will allow direct access to its global E&P datasets, including well, production and asset information from within the Gaia platform. It is hoped that this combination will lead to new insights, enhanced workflows and greatly improved efficiency in the exploration,

development and production of oil and gas resources.

‘Our strategic collaboration with IHS Markit enables our clients to take advantage of a wealth of data, accessible through the Gaia platform, where the latest digital technologies can be used to unlock data value for critical business decisions,’ said Maurice Nessim, president, WesternGeco. ‘Our relationship extends beyond providing access to seamlessly integrated IHS Markit data, WesternGeco multi-client libraries, and public and partner data — all in one place. It also includes collaboration in petrotechnical and data science R&D to rapidly deliver new data solutions on the Gaia platform.’

David Hicks, senior vice president of Energy Upstream at IHS Markit,

said: ‘For years, the industry has talked about the need to break down silos and combine data across organizations to enable our mutual clients to make better decisions faster, and today, two of the biggest providers in E&P content, IHS Markit and Schlumberger are taking a step in that direction. Bringing critical data sources together to help our clients improve efficiencies and extract more value from their assets is the primary goal of this endeavour. Since speed to decision is such a critical issue and data volumes continue to expand rapidly, clients will benefit from the increased use of artificial intelligence and various data science technologies to more quickly interrogate our global E&P database in new ways.’

CGG delivers images for BP offshore Angola four weeks early CGG has delivered broadband 4D seismic results ahead of schedule from BP’s latest monitor survey in the South Atlantic offshore Angola.

The enhanced imaging volumes from the Greater Plutonio development in the Lower Congo Basin were delivered four weeks early for this time-critical BP project.

Faster than expected completion of this workflow, which included the latest advanced proprietary deghosting and demultiple technology, was made possible by continued investment in CGG’s high-performance computing capacity.

Radwa El Zidan, geophysicist from

the BP-Angola asset team, said: ‘We were very impressed by the CGG team’s commitment to achieving an early delivery of the data on what was already a challenging schedule. The early delivery of results will accelerate our active reservoir management programme for this field.’

TGS starts 3D survey offshore Senegal TGS has started a 4500 km2 3D survey in the Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry (MSGBC) MSGBC Basin, offshore Senegal. The Senegal UltraDeep survey is being undertaken in partnership with GeoPartners, using the vessel BGP Prospector, and is supported by Senegal’s national oil company, Petrosen.

The acquisition borders Jaan, TGS’ 3D dataset covering the southern portion of the MSGBC Basin. The new data acquisition will illuminate plays in the ultra-deep to build upon the success the basin has experienced with SNE, FAN and Yakaar. The project has a 60-day acquisition timeline, with fast-track data available four months after acquisition. The full dataset will be available by August 2020.

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Kristian Johansen, CEO at TGS said: ‘Our latest 3D survey extends our coverage in a region in which we have been active for a decade. The MSGBC Basin has been one of the most exciting of the world’s frontier exploration basins in recent years and this survey will help to further develop opportunities for our customers offshore Senegal.’

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INDUSTRY NEWS

Wood Mackenzie launches valuation tool Wood Mackenzie has launched what it claims to be the world’s first Global upstream valuation solution, Lens.

The data analytics platform brings Wood Mackenzie’s global data sets and models together in an integrated cloud interface with built-in screening, valuation, and visualization tools, paired with critical analytics solutions.

Drawing on Wood Mackenzie’s extensive data sets, the solution analyses oil and gas data from around the world, providing up-to-the-minute insight into exploration and production opportunities.

The company claimed that customers will be able to create company or asset valuations in seconds, wherever they are in the world, using its detailed mapping interface. The solution also includes a live fiscal model that connects benchmark prices to net present value using contextual search and flexible filtering.

Global upstream valuations enables users to filter, analyse, benchmark and value an asset or company in the same environment, while also tracing and editing data and valuation models. As the same source data and calculation logic is used,

Shearwater wins contract for 3D survey offshore Colombia Shearwater Geoservices has won a contract to shoot the first 3D Isometrix seismic survey in Latin America for Colombia’s Ecopetrol.

The 2000-km2 3D seismic survey offshore Colombia on Ecopetrol’s Block COL-5 will acquired by the vessel SW Amundsen equipped with Isometrix multisensor streamer technology. The six-week survey will take place in Q4.

Shearwater is experiencing increased activity in Latin America and has opened an office in Colombia to

support its first contract in Colombia and future projects. This follows the recent opening of a branch office in Brazil.

The company has also won a combined 3D and 2D seismic survey in south-east Asia for an undisclosed client. The multi-purpose vessel SW Vespucci will acquire 1600 km2 for 3D seismic acquisition and carry out associated 2D work to be executed over a six-week period from the end of Q3 2019.

The vessel SW Amundsen is acquiring 2000km2 offshore Colombia

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valuation data will be consistent, connected and aligned across all Lens solutions.

Karen Padir, Wood Mackenzie’s chief product officer, said: ‘Having access to the latest digital tools and experts – especially in the complex and evolving energy sector – is absolutely vital for ensuring efficiency, productivity, agility and flexibility.

‘Our new tool completes this at lightning speed, and multiple valuations can be run in seconds rather minutes, which means less data validation and more insightful analysis, and thus improved decision-making.’

Brazil prepares to launch production sharing round Thirteen companies have qualified for Brazil’s 6th Production Sharing Round including BP, Chevron, CNODC, CNOOC, Ecopetrol, ExxonMobil, Murphy, Brazilian Oil, Petrobras, QPI, Repsol, Shell and Wintershall.

The 6th Production Sharing Round is scheduled for 7 November and will offer the Aram, Boomerang, Southern Cross, Southwest Sagittarius and North Brava blocks, distributed in the Santos and Campos basins.

Brazil’s National Agency for Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofeuls (ANP) will hold two pre-salt area auctions in November: the Onerous Assignment Surplus Bidding Round on the 6th and the 6th Production Sharing Bidding Round on the 7 November, which will offer the Aram, Boomerang, Southern Cross, Southwest Sagittarius blocks in the Santos Basin and the North Brava blocks in the Campos Basin.

The Assignment Surplus Bidding Round, scheduled for 6 November, will offer Atapu, Buzios, ltapu and Sepia development areas in the Santos Basin.

These areas are already under development will be offered without exploratory risk. The companies will compete for surplus volumes beyond the five billion barrels to which Petrobras is entitled.

INDUSTRY NEWS

CGG completes big geoscience study in Kuwait CGG has completed a study of Kuwait’s remaining oil and gas potential five months early.

The multi-year integrated geoscience study awarded by Kuwait Gulf Oil Company (KGOC) in early 2017 has identified the resource growth potential in the mature, onshore Partitioned Zone (PZ).

The prospecting and remaining resource assessment study was conducted by CGG Geoscience’s Houston team and involved KGOC to integrate recently acquired and processed 3D seismic data covering the entire onshore PZ, with multiple geological, petrophysical and production data sets to deliver a robust portfolio of exploration prospects and leads as well as asset development infill opportunities for the existing fields.

Mohammad Al-Haimer, DCEO Joint Operations, KGOC, said: ‘Particular-

BRIEFS Magseis Fairfield has leased a MASS I node crew to a client in the Asia Pacific region for 2-3 months. The contract includes nodes, a containerized automated handling system and service personnel, and will start in the fourth quarter 2019 when the nodes are released from a survey in the North Sea.

ly impressive were CGG’s integrated geoscience capabilities, the depth of knowledge they brought to the project and the knowledge transfer that occurred throughout the project. We now have a portfolio of credible oil and gas targets that we can draw on for an extended fiveyear exploration campaign commencing early 2020. Additionally, we are pleased that the work generated a joint patent application utilizing KGOC’s knowledge and data and CGG’s know-how, workflows and software.’

Sophie Zurquiyah, CEO, CGG, said: ‘Our Houston Geoscience team drew on its full range of expertise from geological control, through rock physics and seismic inversion, to prospect identification and production attribute analysis, to help generate a robust exploration portfolio catalogue in the PZ’s mature hydrocarbon habitat.’

Uganda has announced the country’s second licensing round, which includes five blocks in the Albertine Graben: Avivi (1026 km2), Omuka (750 km2), Kasuruban (1285 km2), Turaco (635 km2) and Ngaji (1230 km2).

Colombia is offering 59 blocks in its next round of oil bidding. The blocks are concentrated near its northern Caribbean coast and in its eastern plains. Five of the blocks are offshore and, for the first time, 27 of them are in areas which have been requested by pre-qualified companies.

Nine areas were included in the previous auction, while 13 of the new areas have gas production potential. Companies had until 31 October to deposit offers.

PGS acquires big survey offshore Guyana PGS and CGX Energy are acquiring and processing a full broadband marine 3D seismic survey covering 582 km2 of the northern portion of the Corentyne Block offshore Guyana. The six-week survey offshore the South American country for client CRI and FEGC is expected to be completed by 27 November, 2019.

The Petroleum Directorate of Sierra Leone has extended the deadline for submission of applications for its fourth licensing round in order to allow companies additional time to complete their applications. The Fourth Petroleum Licensing Round is now scheduled to close on 28 February 2020.

PGS is using an integrated acquisition and imaging approach to speed up delivery of the seismic data. A Ramform Titan-class seismic vessel will be used to complete the acquisition, ensuring a high level of safety and operational reliability.

GeoStreamer acquisition technology will enable advanced imaging techniques to provide structural imaging to support drilling decisions.

Professor Suresh Narine, executive chairman of CGX, said: ‘CRI’s arrangement with PGS will allow us to take advantage of PGS’ previous experience in this region of the basin to both acquire and process 3D seismic data crucial to our understanding of the northern region of the Corentyne Block. In the meantime, CRI has been streamlining its prospects in the Demerara Block based on the 3D seismic campaign it conducted over the Demerara Block in 2014.’

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Bosnia and Herzegovina is launching a bidding round for three blocks in the Pannonian Basin and one black in the Dinarides basin. A data room is available at the Federal Institute for Geology in Sarajevo.

Axxis Geo Solutions has won a contract to shoot a large Ocean Bottom Node survey in the fourth quarter of 2019. The planned survey has an estimated scope of 28 vessel months, utilizing two source vessels and two receiver vessels.

Chrysaor has completed its acquisition of ConocoPhillips’ UK oil and gas business for $2.675 billion.

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TGS assesses earthquake risk in eastern Indonesia TGS is working with the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP) marine geosciences group on a project to assess earthquake and tsunami hazards in Banda arc and neighbouring regions in eastern Indonesia.

IPGP – a French governmental, non-profit research and higher education body – is licensing some of TGS’s Banda datasets on a three-year project to analyse seismic reflection and bathymetry data to map active faults and assess geohazards in the region.

The group aims to map active and inactive faults and estimate slip on them, along with an estimation of the total displacement/shortening in the recent past; evaluate the tsunami potential associated with possible failures along these faults

and related slumps on steep trough margins; and develop a tectonic evolutionary model of the region.

Even though the Banda arc system has not produced any great earthquakes in the recent past, there is every reason to believe that there could be future devastating earthquakes in the region that are unknown until they occur, much as was the case in the Sumatra region before the 2004 catastrophic earthquake, said TGS. Kristian Johansen, CEO at TGS, said, ‘I am pleased that 2D seismic images and multibeam data from TGS will be used for this important research project. While our business is very much commercially focused, when our data can be used to potentially benefit the wider community, we are eager to lend our support as part of

our environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) initiatives.’

Professor Satish Singh, principal investigator for the Active Tectonics and Marine Geohazard project at IPGP, added: ‘IPGP and TGS have been collaborating over the last seven years on the analyses of seismic reflection data from Sumatra and Java regions, and this study is a continuation of this activity further to the east and north. We have trained several young Indonesian students and scientists in interpreting these data. We are confident that this project will help to increase the knowledge of tectonic hazards in the region that could eventually lead to improved early warning systems for coastal inhabitants in the Banda arc and north-west Australia region.’

CGG ups its machine learning offer CGG GeoSoftware has imported Python ecosystems machine learning technology into upcoming releases of its HampsonRussell and Jason reservoir characterization solutions.

As a result, experts and data scientists can customize machine learning and reservoir characterization workflows by using extensively available Python machine learning libraries and also their own proprietary code.

Python ecosystems allow users to research and test various machine learning workflows for proof-of-concept or commercial projects. Scripts and workflows directly access well, horizon and seismic data for use in machine learning, deep learning, visualization and numerical analysis. G&G experts and data scientists can use Ecosystem workflows pre-built by CGG or they can build their own new reservoir characterization workflows using the latest open source machine learning packages, such as Google’s TensorFlow.

HampsonRussell and Jason users will now benefit from complete control over input data and analysis output. With 36

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Python ecosystems, users can process data with pre-built or client-proprietary

or a shared directory. Python ecosystem functionality will seamlessly integrate

Python ecosystems will allow users to test machine learning workflows.

Python scripts or Jupyter notebooks, and store input and output data in either a HampsonRussell or Jason project database

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with the application’s data stores and viewers, eliminating the need to export, reformat and reload data.