First Break February 2020 - Reservoir Monitoring

VO L U M E 3 8 I I S S U E 2 I F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 0

SPECIAL TOPIC

Reservoir Monitoring TECHNICAL ARTICLES Domains and trends in AVO DHI scenarios in exploration INDUSTRY NEWS UK and Norway unveil big licensing awards

CORNERSTONE OBN A step-change in CNS imaging Developed in conjunction with Magseis Fairfield, the multi-phase multi-client Cornerstone OBN program will deliver subsurface images of unprecedented quality in the most challenging areas of the UK Central North Sea (CNS).

Phase I, beginning March 2020, will provide approximately 2,500 sq. km of full-azimuth data for HP-HT areas where salt diapirism creates challenges for seismic imaging using existing long-offset streamer data.

First results are expected in Q1 2021.

The right data, in the right place, at the right time Cameron Grant +44 (0)1293 683340 cameron.grant@cgg.com

cgg.com/cnsnodes

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 EAGE MEMBERS CHANGE OF ADDRESS NOTIFICATION Send to: EAGE Membership Dept at EAGE Office (address above)

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High-resolution Carina distributed acoustic fibre-optic sensor for permanent reservoir monitoring and extending the reach into subsea fields

Editorial Contents 3

EAGE News

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Crosstalk

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Industry News

Technical Articles

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Domains and trends in AVO J.A. De Bruin

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DHI scenarios in exploration: a personal view Rob Simm

Special Topic: Reservoir Monitoring

45 Seismic detection of fractured Niobrara reservoirs, Denver Basin, Colorado

Thomas L. Davis 53

Next record breaking magnitude for injection induced seismicity Ngoc-Tuyen Cao, Leo Eisner and Zuzana Jechumtálová

59 4D seismic study of the Volve Field - an open subsurface-dataset

Tony Hallam, Colin MacBeth, Romain Chassagne and Hamed Amini 71 High-resolution Carina distributed acoustic fibreoptic sensor for permanent reservoir monitoring and extending the reach into subsea fields Garth Naldrett, Tom Parker, Sergey Shatalin, Michael Mondanos and Mahmoud Farhadiroushan 77 Advanced multi-attribute passive seismic monitoring analysis for seismic hazard assessment in active fault zones

Irina Nizkous and Doug Angus 83 Maximizing value of a matured carbonate field with a tiered data integration approach to dynamic reservoir characterization

Lee Jean Wong, Hamed Amini and Colin MacBeth

Feature

97 GeoDRIVE – a high performance computing flexible platform for seismic applications Suha N. Kayum, Thierry Tonellot, Vincent Etienne, Ali Momin, Ghada Sindi, Maxim Dmitriev and Hussain Salim 102 Calendar

FIRST BREAK ON THE WEB www.firstbreak.org ISSN 0263-5046 (print) / ISSN 1365-2397 (online)

cover: Drilling rig in the Norwegian North Sea (photo courtesy of Harald Pettersen/Statoil).

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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 Xavier Garcia NSGD Liaison 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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Every subscription includes a monthly hard copy and online access to the full First Break archive for the requested number of online users.

Aart-Jan van Wijngaarden Technical Programme Officer

George Apostolopoulos Chair Near Surface Geoscience Division

Michael Peter Suess Chair Oil & Gas Geoscience Division

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.

First Break is published by EAGE Publications BV, The Netherlands.

However, responsibility for the opinions given and the statements made rests with the authors.

COPYRIGHT & PHOTOCOPYING © 2020 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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Looking forward to EAGE’s NOVEMBER 2020 • FRANCE first energy transition conference

JOIN US!

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Smart Exploration launches first project developments at Canadian mining event

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Pre-salt reservoir workshop success in Rio de Janeiro

WWW.GET2020.ORG

Paris hackathon proves a digital triumph 21835-Get2020 Save the date.indd 1

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Identifying noise signal in seismic signal spectrum This project was proposed by Prof Eleanor Stutzman from IPGP. She pulled together a team of mainly data scientists to explore novel techniques to identify signals of storms within seismic noise.

Methods tried included: Amplitude filtering with an average on area to remove vertical smearing; Edge detection (canny) on seismic data; Image segmentation with a 2D Unet; and k-means clustering.

The results of the group’s work are sufficiently promising that the team wishes to seek publication of the outcomes.

Geohackers at work.

Report on EAGE’s first venture into the world of hackathons, held in Paris last November with the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP). The first DigitalGeoHack hackathon organized at Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris supported by an EAGE PACE Grant proved to be no gamble. Held on November 15 and 16 it was a great success in bringing together 25 computer scientists, machine learning specialists and geoscience experts to participate in exploring new ideas for digitalization and automation in geophysical research, exploration and industrial production processes. We also had two recruiters present interested in finding talented PhD students keen on in tackling machine learning issues in the industry.

We were hoping to address two questions: 1) How can we use cutting edge machine learning and visualization techniques to extract new information about the subsurface? and 2) How can we use such processes to automate typical processes in geosciences industry endto-end?

We kept the topics open and let the teams organize organically. In the morning after presentations introducing the concepts of reproducible software and the latest developments in the Jupyter ecosystem, voilà (https://github.com/ voila-dashboards/voila), the participants pitched ideas and teams of six or seven formed around four ideas. Each team reported on their findings and the lessons learned.

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Predicting missing parameters from well logs The workflow entailed extracting synthetic well log data from reference model (RHOB, DTCO, DTSM); cleaning input dataset; training a variety of models using pymc3 and sklearn; and evaluating and comparing model accuracy/performance.The model produced predictions comparable with rock physics-based estimations. The focus was on estimating missing Vs logs. This approach can be extended to estimating any other kind of missing logs using different input log types. The results of the model fits were very good, the challenge will be to expand this study to include real-world data.

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EAGE NEWS

Automatic interpretation of mineral spectrograms Raman spectra are unique signatures of the structure of minerals and glasses. The project aimed to test various methods to automatically recognize minerals and quantify their proportions in Raman spectra. The team tried two classic machine learning techniques, a simple 1D convolutional neural network (CNN) and a gradient boosted random forest. Interestingly the CNN out-performed the random forest, but this may have been due to problems encountered with the data during the short two-day hackathon.

Identifying fault planes in bathymetry data The interpretation of faults along midocean ridges is an important task in order to better understand tectonic mechanisms. However, the analysis relies on the detection of fault lines which can be extremely laborious when picked manually from the bathymetry. The proposed method used a semi-supervised convolutional network to detect faults.

It employs the U-Net network and the minimization of the IoU metric (mean average precision at different intersec-

tion over union) in order to map faults from the training set. The project showed a novel use of an image processing techniques, and would free up a vast amount of time for people who would otherwise be picking data by hand.

What we learned The teams’ observations about the event included: 1) The diversity of the participants was one of the main factors that led to the success of the event. Regarding the event Professor Eleonore Stutzman had emphasized: ‘I knew no-one from my team, but I knew what I wanted and they knew how to get the solutions’; 2) Participants appreciated the fact that the event was not formal and topics of the projects were not pre-defined; 3) The hackathon was exactly the opposite of a formal workshop, with scheduled presentations and coffee breaks. The primary goal was to provide the space for people of diverse backgrounds to meet and build a network.

It would be brilliant if such an event could be larger and brought in students from the wider network of universities in Paris; and 4) The feedback from IPGP was that this event was highly innovative, and it is hoped that more such events will take

place. It is also not often that recruiters come to a research institute to hire in the private sector.

Acknowledgments John Armitage (Gekko SAS, www. gekko.fr) came up with the idea and built up the team organization. He also prepared the webpage (https://digitalgeohack.github.io/); invited Martin Renou (Quantstack, https://quantstack.net/) as a keynote speaker and advertised the event through the PyData Paris meetup network (https://www.meetup.com/PyData-Paris/) and the Software Underground Slack channel (https://softwareunderground. org/); and ran the event with Milena Marjanović (IPGP, www.ipgp.fr). She led the EAGE PACE grant application, logistics (room, catering, T-shirt), advertising events through Linkedin including EAGE Special Interest Community for Artificial Intelligence and Local Chapter Paris. Matthias Meschede (tweag.io) advertised the event and gave a keynote talk on ‘Reproducible code’.

Fernando Robles Villanueva (Ingima, https://www.ingima.com/) and Miao Yu (IPGP) also helped in putting the event together.

Third time even luckier for Mexico offshore conference EAGE’s Latin American office is busy working on the 3rd Conference on Offshore Exploration and Development to be held in Merida, Mexico on 12-14 May this year and is expecting more participants than ever.

The inaugural event in 2018 attracted 120 participants representing NOCs, IOCs, operators, service companies, government agencies, academia, and consultants. It resulted in seven collaborative industry initiatives involving E&P Operations including the subsurface to unlock the potential of deepwater prospects in the Gulf of Mexico. A second event was called for in 2019 which provided the ideal scenario to meet once again to share

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results and keep developing ideas with the round table discussions and parallel sessions. This time there were 175 delegates to the event.

For the third event, an even bigger turnout of 200 or more is expected. Whilst the first and second conferences focused on the hot topic of deepwater, the programme is being widened in scope concentrating on the integrated value chain from exploration to development, The technical committee has been looking for papers that cover topics such as geophysical methods, technology, interpretation, drilling practice, subsurface or operational uncertainty and risks, sustainable operations and more.

Data as you’ve never seen it before The GAIA digital subsurface platform puts the world’s data at your fingertips—enabling you to make smarter, faster decisions across the E&P life cycle through a customized experience.

From prospecting and screening an area of interest to integrating your data with the massive amount already available, the GAIA platform expedites your access to energy through discovery.

Powered by the cloud-based DELFI cognitive E&P environment, the secure GAIA platform is the gateway to evergreen industry data and automated workflows that enhance cross-domain collaboration and your data-to-discovery journey.

slb.com/GAIA

GAIA Digital Subsurface Platform

DELFI and GAIA are marks of Schlumberger. Copyright © 2020 Schlumberger. All rights reserved. 20-SE-669967

e the date.indd 1

EAGE NEWS

New Local Chapter combines three Siberian cities Coordinating a local chapter uniting three large cities in Siberia was a tough assignment, but EAGE members in Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk were up for the challenge. This new group was launched on 11 November, following the 1st International Oil and Gas Exploration Conference PROGRESS’19 in Sochi, Russia, and represents an expansion of the former Local Chapter Novosibirsk, made possible by an active cooperation network.

In order to overcome the issue of distance, local members launched a ‘Lecturers’ mobility programme’ within the Chapter, so that knowledge can be shared by colleagues in all three cities.

Boris A. Kanareikin, a geophysicist and geoscientist with more than 60 years of experience who works in the Siberian Research Institute of Geology, Geophysics and Mineral Resources, Novosibirsk, presented the first lecture in Tomsk.

His subject was the regional study of a refracted waves method application to evaluate the upper part of folded basement in Western Siberia’. He discussed the importance of combining modern equipment and old seismic methodology (for example, refraction correlation method) when evaluating complex geological structures. The lecture will be presented at the other two locations so that all three chapters can benefit.

Looking forward to EAGE’s first energy transition conference We ‘get’ the challenge of the world’s changing climate for the geoscience and related engineering community. That’s why EAGE is planning the 1st Geoscience & Engineering in Energy Transition Conference (GET) for November this year in Strasbourg, France, final details still to be announced.

engineering challenges, re-use of O&G platforms), etc.

The context of the conference is that the world climate is changing more rapidly than expected, caused by the increasing use of fossil fuels for energy production. A rapid growth in renewable energy supply is needed urgently as coal power has to be switched to gas and renewables or maybe nuclear.

In addition decarbonization of the oil and gas industry using carbon capture and storage (CCS) is being seriously developed. It would seem all options have to be applied simultaneously to have a chance of halting the increase of CO2 production.

Use of the earth’s subsurface plays a pivotal role for most of the technologies that can contribute to slow down the greenhouse effect. Geosciences have a role to play The conference will address what in evolving a safe and environmentally NOVEMBER 2020 • FRANCE skills and what technologies are required friendly handling of the subsurface. to support the growth of renewable energy The targeted storage of CO2 in safe in the energy mix. It will also provide a subsurface formations has been demonWWW.GET2020.ORG forum to exchange the knowledge about strated in many projects. Besides the develCCS, energy storage as well as topics opment of accurate measuring, monitoring such as hazardous (nuclear) waste storand verification technologies, an integrated age, hydrogen/methane production and risk assessment is needed to ensure the storage, geochemistry applications, risk safety of potential storage sites and to and environmental impact analysis, off- 14/01/2020 address 15:11the legitimate concerns of the local shore wind energy (turbine placement, communities about this technology.

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Many renewable energy sources, notably solar and wind, produce variable power. Large-scale energy storage systems need to be provided to level out the imbalances between supply and demand that this causes. Technologies include pumped-storage hydroelectric dams, thermal storage including molten salts, compressed air and electric energy converted into gas (hydrogen, methane) with stockage in natural geological formations, in gas distribution networks or in artificial salt caverns.

Geothermal energy can play a substantial role in the energy system as it provides baseload power and is increasingly targeted as a solution to decarbonise the heating and cooling sector. Future geoscientists will be required to skillfully use both their subsurface knowledge for mapping and quantifying the geothermal reserves, improve the performance and reduce the risks of the assets, and communicate effectively with all stakeholders.

In looking forward to GET, all geoscientists, subsurface engineers, energy providers, the industrial sector, researchers and academics, public authorities and other stakeholders in Europe and beyond are welcome to submit an abstract and join this new and groundbreaking conference.

Learn more at www.GET2020.org.

EAGE NEWS

Join the special EAGE Forum Sessions at the Annual The EAGE Forum Sessions enrich our extensive technical programme with a series of talks between significant figures from the industry, bridging the gap between science and the most pressing issues affecting the wider geoscience and engineering field. Each session tackles a different critical topic, bringing together leaders from different prominent and innovative companies, to discuss, debate and offer visions for the future. Here’s what you can look forward to: Forum Session 1: Preserving O&G industry licence to operate in a complex stakeholder world-case studies from Europe The sudden and rapid decline in the sustainability of the Groningen gas field attests to the power of stakeholders in the debate on the future of the oil and gas industry, particularly onshore Europe.

Societal licence to operate is an increasingly important ‘non-technical risk’. Oil and gas companies, regulators, politicians and others need to be attuned to how best to manage existing and new investments in an increasingly skeptical world. The forum will debate the conflicting dilemmas, using Groningen and other case studies from Europe, with representatives from the diverse set of stakeholders.

Forum Session 2: New technologies for the energy needs of the future Continued oil and gas price pressures, the need for sustainable oil and gas solutions, the Digital Revolution and the Energy Transition all speak to the opportunities and threats provided by new technology.

This panel will focus on the poten-

tial impact of digital change, big data and new ways of working. It will also examine the cross-over of subsurface technologies from the O&G business to new businesses such as geothermal as well as potential technical opportunities arising from the adjacency of traditional oil and gas businesses with new forms of energy provision such as solar and wind.

Forum Session 3: Geoscience careers for future energy supply With the Energy Transition, geoscience students and recent graduates, particularly in Western Europe, are understandably concerned about the long-term viability of their careers as well as the appeal of working in an increasingly vilified oil and gas industry. This panel will examine the viability of long-term employment and career options for new and mid-level geoscientists, whilst also addressing the variety of careers available, career longevity and how the industry can continue to attract the talent needed.

Forum Session 4: Recent exploration discoveries A structural repositioning of the O&G sector is ahead. The Energy Transition

challenges the need for exploration-led growth with a weaker long-term demand outlook. Throughout this period successful explorers have continued to make world-class discoveries that will become important new sources of supply. These demonstrate how the best opportunities can compete in a world seemingly awash with resources. The purpose of this session is to highlight the best new discoveries and discuss how companies are adapting to the new exploration world.

Forum Session 5: Educating future energy professionals – a holistic perspective The Energy Transition is upon us and the world of work is rapidly changing where Digital Technology disrupts business models and changes the way work is done. whilst digital immigrants need to keep up with digital natives, hierarchies disappear, and millennials and Gen Z generations feel entitled to rapid career growth in a compelling workplace. Against this backdrop, how do companies and academia adapt their learning and development approaches to respond to this changing landscape and to develop the future energy professionals the world requires?

EAGE Education Calendar 25 FEB

WEBINAR ON ‘AUTOMATED TOP SALT INTERPRETATION USING A DEEP CONVOLUTIONAL NET’ BY MR ODDGEIR GRAMSTAD

ONLINE

6 APR

EAGE EDUCATION TOUR 13 BY DR IAN JONES

MOSCOW, RUSSIA

10 APR

EAGE EDUCATION TOUR 13 BY DR IAN JONES

SAINT PETERSBURG, RUSSIA

21 APR

EAGE EDUCATION TOUR 13, BY IAN JONES (DATE TBC)

CAIRO, EGYPT

7 JUN

SHORT COURSE, BY JEAN JACQUES BITEAU

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

8 JUN

SHORT COURSE, BY MARTIN LANDRØ,

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

12 JUN

SHORT COURSE, BY EHSAN NAEINI

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

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

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Smart Exploration launches first project developments at Canadian mining event

The EU-funded Smart Exploration project, in which EAGE is a partner, is going public with the first prototypes and methodologies to emerge from research and development to date. In February-March 2020, project representatives will be on a Canadian Tour presenting the results and innovative solutions to stakeholders and potential end-users.

Since the inception of the project, the 27 European partners have worked together to meet the challenging task of developing state-of-art solutions for deep mineral exploration. These have been tested and validated under diverse mining conditions (surface, underground, open pit, brownfield, greenfield). Even though developed for mineral explo-

ration purposes, the inter-disciplinary approach may be applicable to other industries.

The Smart Exploration solutions will be presented and demonstrated over a number of days in Toronto, Canada first at a Workshop in collaboration with the MERC initiative on Novel Seismics and Electromagnetic Methods for Mineral Exploration on 27 February, then at a Special EAGE session at the KEGS 2020 Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) Symposium on 29 February followed by a presence on the exhibition floor at PDAC 2020 on 1-4 March The methodologies being presented include 3D Frequency and time-domain

electromagnetic modeling; Thin-sheet time domain modelling and IP responses; New solutions for near-surface problems and related deeper imaging improvements; Generation of additional data from sparse active-source data with lower environmental impact; and Scattering/diffractivity imaging, improved resolution depth imaging.

The prototypes on show will be a GPS-time synchronization system for denied environment such as underground mines; a slimhole modular system to be used in mining boreholes, an electric seismic source with broadband frequency (E-Vib); an unmanned aerial vehical (UAV) for fast and over difficult terrains data acquisition; and a deep-probing time-domain electromagnetic helicopter-based system (HTEM).

Project Coordinator for the tour is Alireza Malehmir from Uppsala University (Alireza.Malehmir@geo.uu.se) with dissemination leader Asli Onar from EAGE (aov@ege.org) both of whom may be contacted to discuss collaboration possibilities. For more information about the project and other exploitation activities, see www.smartexploration.eu.

EAGE Student Calendar 20 FEB 20 MAR

MINUS CO2 CHALLENGE 2020 APPLICATION|

ONLINE

12 MAR

EAGE ONLINE GEO-QUIZ (STUDENT CHAPTERS ONLY)

ONLINE

16-19 MAR

GEO 2020 - STUDENT CONFERENCE

BAHRAIN, THE KINGDOM OF BAHRAIN

30 MAR

SAGEEP STUDENT EVENT

DENVER, USA

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

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

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EAGE NEWS

Carbonate reservoir management takes centre stage at latest WIPIC workshop The 3rd EAGE Workshop on Well Injectivity and Productivity in Carbonates (WIPIC): Reservoir Management in Carbonates was held in Doha, Qatar on 18-20 November 2019. Co-chairs Dominique Guérillot and Oussama Gharbi report on the success of this year’s workshop.

The three-day workshop brought together specialists from 24 organizations.

Following successful events in 2015 and 2017, the decision this year was to extend the focus of the WIPIC workshop. The main topic reviewed optimal approaches to the management of worldwide carbonate reservoirs, with emphasis on the Middle East. Judging by the wide range of technical presentations and increase in international participants, it was a resounding success.

The workshop began with a one-day course on ‘Integrated Geological Models for Assessing Uncertainties in Production Data’ presented by Dominique Guérillot, professor at Texas A&M at Qatar. The course reviewed main techniques for building an integrated reservoir model and examined potential workflows for field development and history matching processes.

The technical programme of the workshop kicked off with a stimulating presentation from Igor Potapieff, vice president, geosciences and reservoir, North Oil Company on ‘Carbonates Reservoir, Heterogeneities and Production’.

This opening keynote was illustrated by the example of the giant Al Shaheen field.

The oil field, situated off the north east coast of Qatar, is one of the largest and most complex of its kind in the world.

A panel discussion followed featuring leaders from the industry in Qatar: Jas-

sim Al-Khoori, asset manager, North Oil Company; Haytham Abdulaziz Al-Meer, petroleum engineering manager, Qatargas Company; Mounir Ababou, pressure pumping lead, Baker Hughes and Surej Kumar Subbiah, technical and geomechanics advisor, Schlumberger and being animated by Khaled Sassi, formation evaluation technical manager, Schlumberger, and Prof Dominique Guérillot.

The panellists set up the scene on various strategic topics answering very openly on the main technical challenges in the characterization and production of carbonate reservoirs, well stimulation and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects.

Denis Voskov, professor at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, and Henri Bertin, director, National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), University of Bordeaux, France presented excellent technical keynote speeches respectively on ‘Uncertainty Quantification and History Matching for Naturally Fractured Carbonate Reservoirs’ and ‘New Insights on the Use of Polymer and/or Nanoparticles to Reinforce Foam for EOR Operations’.

These keynotes introduced the Day 2 and 3 sessions and posters on Reservoir Characterization, Digital Rock Physics, Reservoir Simulations, EOR and case studies.

The workshop attracted reservoir geologists, geophysicists, petro-physicists and engineers and specialists in geo-statistics, applied mathematics, seismic, geomechanics, well stimulation, well test, and reservoir managers. It was supported by Total (Platinum sponsor), Baker Hughes (Registration sponsor), and Schlumberger (Lanyard sponsor), together with the volunteering contributions of the technical committee. We encourage you to download the extended and full papers already available on EarthDoc. Meantime the next bi-annual workshop is alread a highly anticipated event in Doha, Qatar in 2021.

Poster presentations were part of the workshop programme.

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EAGE NEWS

Borehole geology workshop in Oman delivers fresh insights

WORKSHOP

REPORT

Report on last October’s Third EAGE Borehole Geology Workshop in Muscat which included a one-day field-trip to Jabal Madmar.

The workshop divided into five sessions proved an ideal platform to promote discussion on the different aspects of borehole geology and related technological innovations, hydrocarbon reservoir and field studies, best practices, integrated approaches and applications in new fields.

Beyond Oil and Gas: Mining and mineral resources, environmental applications, geothermal Wells After an excellent and enlightening key note by Dr Wouter Smits, PDO, on the importance of borehole geology in the oil and gas industry, the focus was turned towards borehole geology outside the oil and gas domain.

The importance of international collaboration and academia was shown in the interesting work on the geological setting of hydro geology. Challenges were identified around local structural conditions complicating the overall understanding of groundwater flow and levels.

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Role of the geologist in automation and digital enabling innovations The second session examined how geologists are adapting to the automation and use of digital enablers for cost efficient solutions with innovative workflows with contributions from Schlumberger, Baker Hughes and Eni. The first presentation detailed the utilization of automated workflows to extract the maximum information from high resolution images logs, computing the heterogeneity and texture including the particle shape analysis (the aspects hitherto not utilized). This was followed by a talk on how and why geological data becomes key input to automation as both enabler and validator. Automation without geological validation could be disastrous, and that makes the role of geologists even more important today.

Picking dips on images has been the most time-consuming aspect, and the increased subjectivity of such picks in horizontal wells further adds to the challenge. A third talk addressed this aspect

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of automating the dip-picking where expert-dips picked on image logs to help with near-well structural modelling in quick-time.

The final talk of the session discussed ways in which automation techniques have been used to enhance the image log interpretation and derive the key-value to further integrate dynamic data with digital enablers for optimal exploitation of the reservoir, in this case carbonate reservoirs of Eni. Problem of Scale: from core to log to model Seismic often does not ‘see’ small-scale features and methods. Such sub-seismic features are often very expensive to display and rarely used. The session took into account the problem of scale covering aspects of core description, core goniometry and the integration of borehole data with seismic data sets.

Core goniometry, for example, is a very powerful tool to display core data digitally and to integrate this very detailed information with borehole image data and petrophysical logs. Different techniques were presented and the benefits of investing time and money in in-depth core goniometry analysis were highlighted.

Another important technique is Dual Energy CT Tomography for the calibration of heterogeneity indicators computed by image logs or by 3Combo OH logs. This calibration allows adjustment of the heterogeneity detection in static and dynamic modelling. The target is attained using calibrated flags that can drive the upscaling of properties, porosity, vertical and horizontal permeability in the grid cells of the model.

The session also highlighted the importance of detailed borehole image (BHI) analysis to drive the structural and sedimentological interpretation and to close the gap between seismic resolution

EAGE NEWS

and BHI data. This is important especially if seismic has low quality or when the average size of geo-bodies is below seismic resolution.

New acquisition technologies and their applications Throughout the session innovative BHI applications and workflows were presented to address challenges related to wells drilled with oil-base mud due to resolution and constraints of the downhole drilling environment.

Borehole imaging while drilling in oil-based mud (OBM) has long been a challenge affecting the interpretation of borehole geology compared with wells drilled with water-based mud. For instance, an Eni case study illustrated how the new OBM generation of tools, e.g., a dual–physics logging while drilling (LWD) imager, provides ultrasonic and apparent resistivity images addressing high resolution capabilities in the OBM environment.

A case study from the Thunder Horse field in the Gulf of Mexico demonstrated recent development in BHI technology to provide logs of higher resolution which significantly improve the interpretation potential for geological studies within the OBM environment, thus enhancing the reservoir characterization and modelling.

Multi-disciplinary Integration for Reservoir Management and Monitoring: dynamic and test data, geomechanics, real-time petrophysics and rock typing The session showed a large variation in integration and how BHI data are playing a vital role in multiple disciplines and variations within the oil and gas industry.

Use of core photos in combination with standard image logs gives the opportunity to define multiple fractures types present within a reservoir. By using core photos/core, image logs from neighbouring fields have enhanced potential in understanding more complex geological history, giving rise to improved interpretation of cemented and open fractures with potential for hydrocarbon flow.

Challenging reservoir rock typing in carbonate reservoirs has shown

improvement through logging while drilling image, and a method for reservoir mapping and rock typing was presented through structural reconstruction, fracture extraction and secondary porosity analysis. To complete the method high-resolution images are used.

Through mud logging services, isotope logging is available and shows increased value through integration with image data. The aim of running isotope interpretation while drilling is to record the geochemical variations

improves geological understanding by characterization of both near and deeper fractures. Monopole radial profiling has the potential to estimate drilling induced rock mechanical alterations in the near wellbore region.

Moving from the borehole focused interpretation and taking borehole data towards the seismic resolution interpretation, deep directional electromagnetic technology is opening that door. To ensure success in combining data from borehole focus to electromagnetic to

to identify barriers. Using the data in real-time the analytics are done during the well construction phase, and improvement of production and injection behaviour. X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF) performed at the wellsite gives element data ratios to segregate between different zones otherwise not observed in other data. The combination of image data and XRF interrogation gives increased understanding of sand-on-sand stratigraphic boundaries and improved understanding of field geology.

To improve fracture characterization, it was shown how full wave sonic (FWS) data and image data complement each other. The proposed workflow shows how the combination of data

seismic, multi-disciplinary teams with experts from all involved in the well construction are a requisite to improve the effectiveness in understanding the subsurface and reduce uncertainty in well placement for reservoir drainage.

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Field trip: Borehole image and outcrop aspects of fractures and fractured reservoirs in Jabal Madmar (Oman) The excursion included a visit to two main outcrop sites and included observation and discussion of the classification of natural fractures encountered in the reservoirs and their relationship with mechanical stratigraphy, as well as natural fracture system exposed in the Jabal Madar Natih formation.

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EAGE NEWS

Pre-salt reservoir workshop success in Rio de Janeiro

WORKSHOP

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The 1st EAGE Workshop on Pre-salt Reservoir: from Exploration to Production in Rio de Janeiro, 5-6 December 2019, generated a lot of interest and discussion among the sold-out crowd of 155 delegates. Jeffrey Lukasik, head, Equinor Corporate Pre-salt Centre of Excellence, tells the story.

Held at the Marriott Copacabana, the workshop formed around four keynote addresses, 29 talks and eight posters with contributors coming from pre-salt operators, academia, contractors and industry consortia. ExxonMobil and Equinor were the main sponsors with additional support provided by TGS, PGS and Magseis Fairfield.

The enormous hydrocarbon volumes associated with pre-salt reservoirs and the high level of investments required to exploit them are forcing companies to search, customize and apply leading edge technologies to a growing database of subsurface information and knowledge.

The characterization of these reservoirs is under development and their details continue to evolve. Securing effective drainage strategies, maximizing recovery, optimizing production and ensuring efficient exploration programs depend upon the integration of knowledge and data combined with the application of new technology. The broad technical programme of the workshop addressed each of these topics and provided a good overview on the latest ideas, observations, technologies and industry practices from operator, academic and technical service company perspectives.

The intimate setting allowed for an open exchange of ideas and commentary around the state of our understanding of the pre-salt play and reservoirs today and where it is heading to in the future. There is no question the pre-salt constitutes one of the most significant, prolific and newest reservoir systems in the world.

Opening comments by event co-chair Jorge Lopez (Shell) challenged all delegates to consider what it would take to fulfill recent ambitions by Brazil’s major pre-salt operator Petrobras to go from discovery to production in 1000 days. This set the tone of the workshop 12

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and provided a great catalyst for deeper discussion through the event.

Keynote sessions take aways Carlos Bruhn (Petrobras) reminded us of the importance of geoscience subsurface work in maximizing production from these challenging pre-salt fields. He emphasized the necessity of building sophisticated workflows incorporating all data in systematic ways to fully characterize the subsurface picture and elaborated on the

‘golden rules’ of Petrobras when defining potential production areas. These include (1) early front-end loading of data through drilling of two wells , one with core and both with complete logging suites, side wall coring programs and fluid sampling, (2) drill stem test (DST) and injectivity testing in both wells, (3) extended well tests (>6 months) with pressure interference tests from other wells. As the future and currently non-developed pre-salt areas become more challenging and complex, it will be interesting to witness how these rules develop over time and in what ways.

Although the challenges facing pre-salt carbonate lacustrine reservoirs are many, they are not impossible to

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overcome. This was the key message delivered by Joachim Amthor (Shell). He emphasized the need for using a ‘back to the rocks’ approach that sees detailed thin-section and sedimentological analysis being upscaled into facies models that can be tested at the seismic scale. With a lack of known analogues to work from, the development of predictive subsurface models of reservoir presence and quality need to be built from the data at hand and shaped with geological insight.

Paulo Couto (UFRJ) and Enrique Estrada (Halliburton) both highlighted the need for multi-scale integration of geological, rock physics, and digital techniques to properly characterize these reservoirs and crack the code of pre-salt carbonate IOR/ EOR. Embracing new digital technology is necessary if we are to progress along these lines. With a current recovery factor of 21% for Brazil pre-salt reservoirs, there is a lot of potential to move the needle on resource growth in the future.

Technical session takeaways The pre-salt is a young, yet extremely prolific play ramping up to over 1 MMbbl per day within eight years after first

EAGE NEWS

discovery. Up until recently, most of the data and knowledge were tightly held by a handful of operators and partners as they worked quickly to understand these unique reservoirs and their producibility.

With the recent opening of acreage access to new players, established production and multiple giant and supergiant field developments underway, more data are available to many with more avenues to discuss them. With increased data and experienced gained, there come new opportunities – and an increased awareness of key technical challenges that need to be overcome. The technical contributions at the workshop reflected this new reality forming along two major themes.

Firstly, integration, as the heterogeneity of the pre-salt carbonate reservoir system demands analytical approaches to be both multi-scale and integrated. The fact that current exploration, development and production assets have similar pre-salt reservoirs makes it possible.

On the geoscience side, there are fundamental questions to be asked from the well bore to the regional scale. Are we making large steps in understanding this new reservoir system? Indications say yes. From what seems to be a newly-defined reservoir system of early-silicified microbial carbonates in the outer Campos basin (Hunt et al., winner of the best talk award), to the detailing of complex pore system interactions (micro pore to karst scale) that define permeability pathways, integrated analyses are making advances possible. Within geophysics, the integration of pore-scale analysis and their elastic properties is allowing for seismic inversions to deliver deeper insight into predictive reservoir trends.

An integrative workflow that uses time shifts as a product of saturation is making

4D seismic a real possibility in these stiff carbonate reservoirs.

From the exploration perspective, a combination of regional datasets (crustal-scale models, structural reconstructions and pressure trends etc) with fieldscale reservoir details from discovered/ producing subsurface field analogues is rapidly becoming the norm for effective exploration workflows. Integration has truly become the way of working. The development of new digital technology, like pore imaging and digital rock physics, will continue to push the possibilities further.

Secondly, the push for project acceleration to first oil, and the need to meet the demands of accelerated activity in acreage access and data acquisition, have forced technical innovation across the value chain. Seismic acquisition is reaching new heights with on-board pre-stack depth migration delivery, early-phase exploration-driven ocean bottom node surveys, and innovative solutions for multiple nearby acquisitions programmes. Advances in computational power are allowing new generations of fast geomodel updates and simulations that test geological scenarios in fractions of the time required in the past. Field developments are routinely phased, allowing for early-defined concept selections and an uplift in the development flexibility that is needed in these pre-salt fields. All of these examples are facilitated by advances in technology and are all focused on building towards more predictive and optimized drainage strategies for these reservoirs. The drive towards project acceleration will continue, especially as new operators enter onto the development scene.

Nearly 15 years ago entirely unknown to the scientific world, the understand-

ing of pre-salt carbonate reservoirs has evolved significantly since their first discovery. The reservoir’s enormous production potential is continuing to push the industry to develop new methods for reservoir characterization, seismic techniques and analytical tools focused on multi-scale integration of data – not only to facilitate project acceleration but also to maximize ultimate recovery. As new fields come on line and more data are generated. the full potential of the pre-salt will become more clear.

As an industry, we can ensure this enormous resource potential will be optimized and managed effectively and safely if we, together, continue to share ideas and observations, push technology development, and build new integrated ways of working. Our combined challenge of ensuring significant value capture through project acceleration to early first oil and effective drainage optimization requires stronger innovation along the value chain, increased use of digital technology and effective integration of data.

Building on the success of this first workshop, a second event is already being planned for September 2020 in Rio de Janeiro. It will continue to focus on deepening our understanding of the pre-salt reservoir system and promote open curiosity and discussion on the new insights, innovation and strides made towards resolving key reservoir challenges.

Special thanks to the co-chairs Jorge López (Shell) and Marcos Fetter (Petrobras) and the session chairs Marcos Grochau (Petrobras), Gustavo Catao (Petrobras), Diego Gracioso (Shell), James Miller (Exxon Mobil), Gareth Jones (Exxon Mobil), Sidnei Rostirolla (BPS), Santiago Drexler (Halliburton) and Jeffrey Lukasik (Equinor).

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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CROSSTALK

BY AN D R E W M c BAR N E T

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Chapters of woe Oil companies have never enjoyed a good press. The History of Andrew Scott Cooper’s The Oil Kings (2012) is a timely the Standard Oil Company by Ida Tarbell published in 1904 is reminder that Iran’s oil riches have long been a focus for Western widely acknowledged as one of the earliest and finest examples of attention. As far back as 1953, American and British governments investigative journalism. The book revealed the irrefutably unfair organized a coup to oust the government of Mossadegh Mohamif not necessarily illegal business practices of John D. Rockefeller mad (which in 1971 had nationalized the nation’s oil industry) and as he strove to establish Standard Oil as the behemoth controlling prop up the Shah of Iran. He in turn was abandoned in 1979 foloil production, refining and distribution in the US. Tarbell’s work lowing a shift in favour of Saudi Arabia in the OPEC community. is credited as providing the catalyst leading to the break-up of the Today, emboldened by its new oil independence status, President company as Congress introduced a number of anti-monopolistic Trump seems willing to stir the Middle East pot by aggravating trade measures between 1906 and 1911.

Iran, something President Obama and President George W. Bush Trawling through the massive library of books written about before him had been reluctant to do, partly because US oil supplies the oil industry since, the majority tends to take a jaundiced view were still vulnerable. of its operations. Of course there has always been a steady trickle It is no surprise that a new bestselling book provocatively titled of more gung-ho books, in some cases deservedly, extolling the Blowout (2019) takes a less than flattering view of the oil industry’s exploits and technology innovation involved in providing the role in the world. It is the work of political commentator Rachel energy source that has fuelled the world for Maddow, who hosts her own show on the more than a century.

‘We should take notice MSNBC channel in the US. On a suspiciously Yet these are drowned by the relentless sexist note, some reviewers have referred to of this book as a critiques, understandably so. The industry is a Maddow’s BA from Stanford (in public policy) sitting target. We still live in a world dominated current example of the and her doctorate from Oxford University by oil and gas. Its strategic importance in (in political science) as though without these persistent demonizing qualifications a female TV analyst would not the welfare of nations and the unimaginable wealth involved has led to much government be taken seriously. of the oil industry.’ and corporate malfaisance, not to mention outIn fact we should take notice of this book as breaks of war. It is no excuse that large global businesses like oil, a current example of the persistent demonizing of the oil industry, pharmaceuticals, financial markets, automobile industry, aviation, especially as it evidently resonates with a lot of readers, admittedly Facebook, etc have all attracted their share of scandal. in this case mainly in the US. The subtitle of the book Corrupted The oil industry is unique, set apart in being an integral factor democracy, rogue state Russia and the riches and most destructive in power struggles around the world. Its leading corporate players industry on Earth provides a clue to its perspective. are often key actors sometimes acting in unison with their governIn fact the book is far from original. This is clear from the ment’s national interests, sometimes not. The Pullitzer Prize-wingenerous attribution given to sources provided in chapter notes at ning Private Empire (2012) by Steve Coll is an astonishing exposé the end of the volume. What Maddow has done over more than of the extraordinary power and influence of ExxonMobil around 350 pages is to cherry pick stories already told elsewhere about the world and in US politics, including its foreign escapades and instances of greed, disregard for safety and the environment, interference, human rights violations, climate change denial, and corruption, incompetence and political interference that have from handling of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. time to time discredited global oil and gas operations. She recounts

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This kind of hyperbole is really unhelpful because it is not these excesses in her distinctive breathless style, tinged with the backed up by any realistic solution. Puzzlingly, she writes: ‘The odd flashes of ironic humour. oil and gas industry . . . is wholly incapable of any real self-examHer book starts rather entertainingly with President Putin in ination, or of policing or reforming itself. Might as well ask the 2003 bizarrely taking time out of a state visit (when relations with lion to take up a plant-based diet. If we want the most powerful the US were more friendly) to officially open the first US Lukoil and consequential industry on our planet to operate safely, and gas station in Manhattan. The outlet has long since closed and an rationally, and with actual accountability, well, make it. It’s not apartment building now occupies the site. mission-to-Mars complicated either, but it works.’

Maddow has resuscitated some other good stories, for example, Quite how accountability would work in the major oil-proan early exercise in fracking. In 1973 the now largely forgotten ducing regimes of Saudi Arabia, Russia and many other countries Rulison project and a follow-up experiment, both in Colorado, where oil resources are state-owned is not explained. involved the underground detonation of nuclear devices (in the The other fundamental flaw in books like Maddow’s is the conRulison case nearly three times the destructive power of the sistent refusal to admit the enormous benefits that the oil industry Hiroshima bomb). The purpose of the explosions at a depth of over has bequeathed on the world. In all the literature, The Moral Case 8000 ft (2440 m) was to release the trapped gas, correctly believed for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein (2014) is about the only upfront, to be trapped in the subsurface. Subsequently this sole venture into unapologetic acknowledgement to be found of the value of oil and nuclear fracking, supported by the US Atomic Energy Commisgas resources to our way of life and the necessity to continue their sion, was scrapped due to radioactivity concerns and expense. exploitation for the foreseeable future. It is not a masterpiece, but it In this US-centric narrative Maddow threads together varat least provides a case for the defence that the ious obvious targets such as the ill-starred fracking in Oklahoma causing earthquakes ‘The other fundamental oil industry with all its wealth seems incapable of mounting. Why we hate the oil companies at first denied: the outrageous corruption and flaw is the consistent by John Hofmeister (2010) also brings some extravagant spending of Teodorin Ngeuma balance from a former Shell executive.

Obiang, the ruler of Equatorial New Guinea, refusal to admit the Otherwise, in the vacuum of positive made possible by an oil bonanza; the BP Deep enormous benefits that standpoints, ludicrous books such as FrackHorizon drilling disaster, Shell’s unfortunate opoly by Wenonah Hauteur (2016) have found drilling escapade in the Arctic, and of course the oil industry has their way into print. Apparently a revered US the much earlier ruthless behaviour of John D. bequeathed on environmental lobbyist, her recommendations Rockefeller. the world.’ on one side include: ‘Keep all fossil fuels in Her main beef is with Russia under Presithe ground; ban fracking and all associated dent Putin, prompted by the suspected Russian activities including mining for sand and disposing of waste; restore interference in the 2016 US elections. She documents how the strong protections in our commodities markets that prevent Wall industry became the fiefdom (and cash cow) of the president and Street speculators from profiteering and artificially driving fossil his pals and the cosying up to Russia by ExxonMobil under Rex fuel production; and prevent energy and petroleum company mergTillerson, subsequently a short-lived US Secretary of State in ers that accelerate environmental degradation, gouge consumers the Trump Administration. Putin’s internet plotting in favour of and allow fossil field companies to become even more politically presidential candidate Donald Trump is ascribed by Maddow to a powerful’. The antidote should come in the form of various calls personal dislike of Hilary Clinton and more significantly to resentfor spending on clean energy and energy-efficient solutions. ment at the US sanctions in the fallout of the annexation of Crimea To which all can one say is ‘Good luck with that’ even if in the which were stunting Russia’s oil and gas expansion ambitions. author’s view ‘it’s a matter of life and death’.

She concludes: ‘It is easy to work up some proper indignation In looking for a measured description of the global history of over the damage wrought by America’s biggest producers of oil the oil and gas industry, nothing has surpassed the monumental and gas. They’ve managed to stunt developing countries on almost The Prize by Daniel Yergin (1991), most recently published with every continent and to prop up authoritarian thieves and killers an epilogue in 2009, which should be read alongside his subsequent . . . from Obiang to Putin. They’ve fouled oceans, gulfs, lakes, book The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern rivers and streams around the world. They’ve induced man-made World (2011). These works may lack moral judgment, but at least earthquakes, strewn radioactive waste about the landscape; killed they accurately describe the intersection between the oil industry off family pets and farm animals, sickened schoolchildren; turned and government, the stakes involved, and what motivated the key state governments into impotent little quisling servants that rip off players. Others such as Tom Bower’s Oil: Money, Politics and their own people to make sure the industry gets everything it wants, Power (2009) and Maddow’s contribution have tried to update the and more. And that’s not even to consider the Big One: they are the story but with none of Yergin’s depth of research and authority. chief drivers of the global climate catastrophe.’

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

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Processing & Imaging

Clearly Better.

Agile, responsive teams of experts, available when, where and for however long you need them. Get high-quality data rapidly, reduce costs and build in flexibility at the heart of your project.

Revealing possibilities shearwatergeo.com

HIGHLIGHTS

INDUSTRY NEWS

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Norway APA signals seismic study bonanza

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PGS to acquire new data offshore Congo

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UK attracts 100 bids for 32nd licensing round

Shearwater backlog increases sevenfold Shearwater GeoServices has announced a more than sevenfold increase in 2020 backlog to 65 vessel-months at the start of 2020, up from nine vessel-months at the same time a year ago.

The Shearwater fleet now comprises 23-vessels.

This backlog includes 24 months of the minimum commitment in the recently signed capacity agreement with CGG for two vessel-years annually over a five-year period, but excludes the minimum commitment to collect data for WesternGeco under the deal to take over operation of its vessels.

Shearwater completed the deal with CGG in January in which the company took ownership of five fully equipped high-end seismic vessels and two legacy vessels and seismic equipment including five complete streamer sets. Shearwater now has a fleet of 23 vessels, including three OBS MPVs and two dedicated source vessels.

The two companies also announced that a joint venture, under CGG’s Sercel brand, for research and development, man-

ufacturing, commercialization and support of marine streamer seismic acquisition equipment is on target to be finalized in the second half of 2020.

‘We see great value for the industry in creating a competitive provider of state of the art and competitively priced streamer technology. The purpose of the JV is to develop best of breed technologies under the Sercel brand name, capitalizing on its long history of delivering leading technologies to the seismic acquisition market,’ Irene Waage Basilli, CEO of Shearwater, said.

Last month, Shearwater announced the award of three Isometrix 4D towed streamer projects by Equinor, and a 4D Qseabed Ocean Bottom Seismic (OBS) project by Lundin Norway for the 2020 North Sea summer season.

In November, Shearwater announced the award of the largest-ever 4D campaign in the Asia Pacific region by Woodside covering up to six fields in late 2019 and into 2020. It was the second 4D award by Woodside in 2019.

‘We have announced several projects for execution this year including several 4D awards cementing our leading position in this segment. The 4D project pipeline for 2020 is strong,’ Waage Basili added.

Meanwhile, Shearwater’s acquisition of the TGS Argentina survey was expanded to include a second vessel and 11 vessel months overall.

In response to increased regional activity, the company in 2019 opened an office in Rio de Janeiro in August and FIRST

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completed seven months of acquisition in Brazil, as well as executing its first project offshore Colombia supported by a newly established local branch office.

Other contracts include projects for Shell in the Black Sea and a number of surveys in the North Sea for customers such as Lundin and Total. This capped a strong year for the multi-purpose vessel fleet, which through the year executed 12 vessel months of ocean bottom seismic, as well as source, 2D and 3D projects for various customers.

‘2019 was an active year led by the integration of the WesternGeco business, vessel reactivations and successful execution of several acquisition projects,’ said Waage Basili. ‘We start 2020 with a strong platform for growth in our backlog, with the world’s largest high-end fleet as well as cutting-edge processing and imaging technology. The guaranteed cash flow and activity level from the capacity agreement give vastly improved visibility.’

Meanwhile, Shearwater’s processing and imaging business reported a 65% increase in 2019 revenue versus 2018, and a 50% increase in backlog versus this time last year. Shearwater has signed processing and imaging master services agreements with two international oil companies.

Last year the company announced a technology collaboration with Equinor and the Norwegian Research Council for the next generation marine seismic source technology.

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Equinor sets out roadmap to zero emissions

Eldar Sætre, CEO of Equinor (photo courtesy Equinor/Ole Jørgen Bratland).

Equinor has launched targets to reduce the absolute greenhouse gas emissions from its operated offshore fields and onshore plants in Norway to net zero by 2050.

The company is aiming to cut emissions by 40% by 2030, 70% by 2040 and to near zero by 2050. By 2030 this implies annual cuts of more than 5 million tonnes, corresponding to around 10% of Norway’s total CO2 emissions, with 2005 emission levels used as a baseline.

‘Equinor supports the Paris agreement and a net zero target for society. We have already brought CO2 emissions in the production process down to industry leading levels. We are now launching an unprecedented set of ambitions for forceful industrial action and substantial absolute emission reductions in Norway, aiming towards near zero in 2050. This is in line with society’s climate targets and

our strategy to create high value with low emissions,’ Eldar Sætre, CEO of Equinor, said.

‘While realising these ambitions, we also expect our operated fields and plants to create significant value with a potential to generate more than $340 billion in income for the Norwegian State towards 2030. New fields, field life extensions, improved oil and gas recovery and efficient operations will all contribute to substantial value creation.

The new climate ambitions will strengthen future competitiveness and value creation for Equinor, while supporting industrial developments in Norway,’ Sætre added.

‘We plan investments in the order of $5.6 billion together with our partners by 2030 to cut emissions in order to strengthen the long-term competitiveness for our fields and plants.’

Total emissions for Equinor operated fields and plants in 2018 were around 13 million tonnes, approximately the same level as in 2005. The ambition will cover all greenhouse gas emissions from offshore fields and onshore plants operated by Equinor in Norway, including both Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions of CO2 and methane.

A 40% reduction by 2030 will be realized through large-scale industrial measures, including energy efficiency, digitalization and the launch of several

electrification projects at key fields and plants, including the Troll and Oseberg offshore fields and the Hammerfest LNG plant.

Further reduction ambitions towards 70% in 2040 and close to zero in 2050 will require additional measures, further electrification projects, consolidation of infrastructure as well as opportunities to develop new technologies and value chains.

In 2050, Equinor expects Norwegian oil and gas production to be less than half of current levels, assuming development of the defined projects, substantial efforts to increase production from existing fields and continued exploration.

Currently Equinor is pursuing and maturing opportunities within offshore wind, carbon capture and storage and emissions-free hydrogen based on natural gas.

The ambitions will support the development of new value chains within hydrogen and carbon capture and storage and help to ensure that the Norwegian Continental Shelf and onshore plants ‘can play an important role and create value in a world with net zero emissions’.

Equinor said it will present new corporate climate ambitions and a ‘holistic climate platform, including an approach to decarbonisation and life cycle emissions’at its capital markets update this month.

TGS delivers multibeam programme offshore Brazil TGS has completed a new multibeam and coring programme covering more than 213,0000 km2 in the Campos and Santos basins of offshore Brazil.

This study, known as a SeepHunter campaign, includes the results of 342 conventional cores and 29 jumbo piston cores and heat probes. Additionally, advanced geochemistry has been performed on more than 60 core samples to date.

Kristian Johansen, CEO at TGS, said, ‘TGS is making significant investments in geoscience projects in the region, includ-

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ing 2D and 3D regional seismic acquisition. Additional SeepHunter programmes are also planned. We will continue to prioritize Brazil as it remains a world-class petroleum basin with some of the world’s most exciting oil and gas exploration opportunities.’

In 2018, TGS expanded its Santos 3D programme over the prospective southern Santos Basin offshore Brazil. Combined with long-offset 2D seismic surveys over most of the Santos and Campos Basins, the 3D surveys cover an area south of the

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major oil and gas discoveries in the Santos Basin and the recent highly sought-after blocks offered in Rounds 15 and 16.

Meanwhile, TGS said that it expects fourth quarter net segment revenues of $230 million. Johansen said: ‘After record high revenues in Q3, we are pleased to follow up with another solid quarter.

This means that TGS’ full-year pro-forma revenues were up by 16.2% compared to 2018. Further, our sales pipeline for Q1 2020 looks promising, with high vessel activity combined with solid pre-funding.’

INDUSTRY NEWS

Exploration round-up Total and partners Equinor, Exxon and BP have signed an agreement with stateowned Sonangol of Angola to extend their production licences to 2045. Located 150 km off the Angolan coast in water depths from 600 to 1400 meters, Block 17 has produced almost 3 billion barrels of oil since 2001. The Zinia Phase 2, CLOV Phase 2 and Dalia Phase 3 projects are under development on Block 17 to add 150 million barrels of resources. Other projects for extending the production of Pazflor, Rosa, Girassol and Dalia are being studied.

Two wells are already planned for 2020.

DNO’s wildcat well 6507/7-16 S 4 km west of the Heidrun field in the northern part of the Norwegian Sea has encountered a total gas column of 52 m in the early and middle Jurrassic-age Garn, Not and Ile formations, of which 48 m is sandstone with good-to-very-good reservoir quality. Under the gas column, there is a 4m-thick oil column in the Ile Formation. Net water-bearing reservoir rocks of about 75 m were encountered deeper in the Ile, Ror and Tilje Formations, mainly with moderate-to-good reservoir quality. The discovery is estimated at 1 to 2 million standard cubic metres (Sm3) of recoverable oil equivalents.

Petrotal has completed its second horizontal well in the Bretaña oilfield in Peru. The well reached the target Vivian formation at a vertical depth of 2696 m. The 863-m horizontal section makes the 5H well the longest horizontal well drilled to date in Peru. Initial production from the 5H well was 8,250 BOPD. Spirit Energy’s Ossian-Darach exploration well in the Southern North Sea

QC-TOOL

reached a total depth of 3300 m and encountered both gas and oil.

Neptune Energy has been granted a drilling permit for wildcat well 6507/8-10 S in production licence PL 889. The well will be drilled 7 km east of the Heidrun field in the Norwegian Sea. Neptune Energy has also won consent for exploration drilling in Block 6507/8 in the Norwegian Sea east of the Heidrun field.

Aker BP has been granted a drilling permit for appraisal well 25/2-22 S in production licence PL 442. The well will be drilled about 37 km north of the Heimdal field in the North Sea. Aker BP has also won consent for exploration drilling in Block 25/2 in the North Sea. Equinor and Rosneft have taken an investment decision on the first stage of the conventional North Komsomolskoye field in Western Siberia.

Wintershall Dea has won consent for well 6604/5-2 S in production licence PL 894 120 km southwest of the Aasta Hansteen field in the Norwegian Sea. Equinor is drilling well 30/6-31 S in production licence PL 053 8 km northeast of the Oseberg field centre in the North Sea. Equinor is also drilling well 7219/9-3 in production licence PL 532 about 25 km southwest of Johan Castberg FPSO in the Barents Sea. OMV is drilling well at PL 644 close to Aasgaard field in the North Sea.

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AGS signs delayed 3D OBN survey contract in the Middle East Axxis Geo Solutions (AGS) has signed a delayed contract for a 3D ocean bottom node (OBN) seismic acquisition survey in the Middle East.

‘This contract will secure activity for the company and contribute revenues through most of the winter season,’ AGS CEO, Lee Parker, said.

‘In addition, this contract is a sign of seismic activity re-emerging in the region through

advanced OBN seismic and imaging technology with potential demand for OBN seismic in years to come.’

The work was expected to commence in early January 2020 and will continue through most of the first quarter.

The company said that it is considering ‘various options’ to strengthen its working capital position to expand its capabilities this year.

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INDUSTRY NEWS

Norway APA round awards lead to bonanza in seismic studies Commitments to acquire and reprocess seismic data and carry out EM feasibility as well as G&G studies are attached to many of the 69 production licences on the Norwegian Continental Shelf offered in Norway’s Awards in Pre-Defined Areas 2019 (APA 2019).

The production licences are located in the North Sea (33), the Norwegian

in 1032; OMV will reprocess 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1033; Chrysaor will acquire and reprocess 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1034; Suncor will acquire and reprocess seismic data in 1035 and carry out G&G studies; DNO will carry out G&G studies in 1036; Capricorn will acquire and reprocess 3D seismic data and carry out G&G

Sixty nine licences have been awarded in the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea.

Sea (23) and the Barents Sea (13). Twenty-eight companies have been offered ownership interests in one or more production licences. Of these, 19 will be offered operatorships.

The APA licensing rounds cover the most explored areas on the Norwegian shelf. One of the primary challenges in mature areas is the expected decline in discovery size.

Offers of licences/operatorships are as follows: Aker BP (15/9); Norske Shell (5/2); Capricorn (3/3); Chrysaor (8/3); Concedo (4/0); ConocoPhillips (5/3); DNO (10/2); Edison (2/1); Equinor (23/14); Idemitsu (2/0); Ineos (2/1); Lime (2/0); Lotos (2/0); Lundin (12/7); Neptune (13/4); OKEA (5/2); OMV (4/1); ONE-Dyas (3/0); Pandion (3/0); PGNiG (3/0); Repsol (1/0); Source (3/0); Spirit (6/1); Suncor (5/2); Total (2/1); Vår Energi (17/7); Wellesley (7/3); Wintershall Dea (9/3).

North Sea In the North Sea Equinor will acquire G&G studies in production licence 277; Aker BP will acquire new EM data and G&G studies in 442; Conoco Phillips will acquire G&G studies on 917B; Lundin will acquire 3D seismic data and G&G studies 20

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studies in 1037; and acquire 3D seismic data and G&G studies in 1038; Equinor will acquire 3D seismic data and G&G studies in 1039 and acquire modern 3D seismic data and G&G studies in 1040; Aker BP will acquire and/or reprocess 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1042; Vår Energi will acquire modern 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1043; Wellesley will acquire and reprocess 3D seismic data and acquire G&G studies in 1044; Aker BP will carry out G&G studies in 1045; Chrysaor will acquire and reprocess 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1046; Aker BP will acquire and reprocess 3D seismic data, carry out an EM feasibility study and G&G studies in 1047; Lundin will reprocess 3D seismic data, carry out an EM feasibility study and G&G studies in 1048; Equinor will carry out G&G studies in 1050; Lundin will acquire and reprocess 3D modern seismic data, carry out an EM feasibility study and G&G studies in 1051; Wellesley will acquire and reprocess 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1052; Neptune will carry out G&G studies in 1053; Wintershall will acquire and/or reprocess 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1054.

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Norwegian Sea In the Norwegian Sea Okea will acquire a 3D seismic survey and G&G studies in production licence 093; Ineos will reprocess 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1055; Shell will carry out G&G studies in 1056; Capricorn will acquire 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1057; Equinor will reprocess 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1058; Shell will carry out G&G studies in 1059; Wellesley will acquire 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1061; Neptune will acquire and reprocess 3D seismic data, carry out an EM feasibility study and G&G studies in 1062 and reprocess 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1063; Vår Energi will reprocess 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1065; Aker BP will reprocess 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1066; Spirit Energy will carry out G&G studies in 1067; Equinor will carry out G&G studies in 1068; Lundin will reprocess 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1069; Total will reprocess 2D and 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1070; and Wintershall will reprocess 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1071.

Barents Sea In the Barents Sea Vår Energi will reprocess 2D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in production licence 1072 and reprocess 2D and 3D seismic data in 1073, acquire new seismic data and carry out G&G studies on 1074 and acquire 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies on 1075; Equinor will acquire new 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1076 and acquire modern 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1077 and acquire modern 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1078; Vår Energi will acquire modern 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1079; Equinor will acquire 3D modern seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1080; Aker BP will carry out G&G studies in 1081; Lundin will acquire and reprocess 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1082 and will acquire a minimum of 3000 km2 3D seismic data and carry out G&G studies in 1083.

INDUSTRY NEWS

UK Oil and Gas Authority sets out plans for digital services The UK Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) has set out its plans for digital services to support the country’s oil and gas industry.

According to its Digital Strategy, over the next five years the OGA will include an OGA-wide learning and development programme to enhance digital skills; the creation of a single easy-to-use OGA digital platform which integrates all the OGA’s digital service offerings and is suitable for use in machine learning; and an enhanced analytics and business

intelligence platform to provide deeper insight into data — as part of this the OGA will continue to build dashboards, business intelligence tools, user interfaces and systems of insight from authoritative OGA data sets to provide new analysis and insights.

The OGA said that since it was established in 2015 it has delivered many successful digital initiatives such as launching the UKCS Stewardship Survey, providing subsurface data releases to support licensing rounds and establishing the first UK

National Data Repository (NDR), which is being used in more than 191 countries.

Simon James, chief information officer at the OGA said: ‘Being the industry’s go-to source for authoritative data has always been a high priority for us but now we can go further by fostering a digitally enabled culture and providing enhanced user experiences to stakeholders. Data is an enabler of new and disruptive business models, which can lower costs, develop new digital platforms and improve digital experiences.’

North Sea set for another big year says Wood MacKenzie Companies will increase production in the North Sea for the first time since 2017 and the outlook for both exploration and investment is ‘looking healthy’, according to research by Wood Mackenzie.

The energy research consultancy expects production to increase by 5% to six million barrels per day ‘as companies ramp up key fields’. WoodMac said most of the increase will come from big fields that started up in 2019, such as Johan Sverdrup, Mariner and Culzean.

According to Neivan Boroujerdi, WoodMac’s principal analyst for North Sea upstream, the ‘exploration renaissance we witnessed in 2019’ will continue. ‘While elsewhere globally exploration budgets remain suppressed,

we expect to see 60 exploration wells in the North Sea which is flat yearon-year and similar to pre-downturn levels,’ Boroujerdi said. ‘Norway will see the most activity, with as many as 40 wells, including up to 10 in the Barents Sea.’ Boroujerdi highlighted that capital investment across the region should total nearly $25 billion, which is roughly in line with last year and that there will be plenty more deals this year after $15 billion worth of assets changed hands in the North Sea in 2019.

‘Private equity-backed companies will now be thinking about exiting.

When combined with a continuation of the supermajor sell-off, it means there could be bargains to be had in the UK,’ Boroujerdi said.

He added that the North Sea will be at the forefront of decarbonization this year.

Senegal launches 2020 licensing round The 2020 Senegal Licensing Round was launched on 31 January, comprising 12 blocks in the MSGBC Basin, offshore Senegal.

National oil company Petrosen has partnered with TGS, GeoPartners and PGS

to provide more than 14,000 km of 2D data, more than 10,000 km of 3D data and more than 50,000 km2 of multibeam data with associated shallow cores and geochemistry.

Events are planned in London on 19-20 February and Houston on 24-25 FIRST

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February 2020. Presentations will provide an opportunity to review and discuss the exploration opportunities available with technical advisers and senior ministry personnel, arrange private meetings and further data viewings.

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Norway reports record production and exploration figures

There are now a record 87 producing fields in the Norwegian shelf.

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate has reported that a record number of fields are now producing on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.

Fifty seven exploration wells were spudded in 2019, four more than in 2018.

Thirty seven exploration wells were drilled in the North Sea, 15 in the Norwegian Sea and five in the Barents Sea. A record 83 production licences were awarded across the Norwegian shelf in 2019 in the Awards in Pre-defined Areas (APA 2018). There were also ‘a good number’ of applications for APA 2019, which were expected to be made in January.

Developments in seismic technology have resulted in much sharper images of the subsurface, contributing to 17 discoveries in 2019, ten in the North Sea, six in the Norwegian Sea and one in the Barents Sea, said the NPD. Since 2011 an average of 80 million standard cubic metres (Sm3) of oil equivalent (o.e.) has been proven each year, around one-third of the yearly production from the Norwegian shelf.

‘The last two years have seen a marked increase in proven volumes compared

with the three previous years. This shows that there is a connection between the number of exploration wells drilled and discoveries made,’ NPD director general Ingrid Sølvberg said.

At the end of 2019, there were a record 87 producing fields. Most of the oil and gas still comes from the major fields.

About half of the fields are subsea developments tied into other infrastructure.

The NPD projects that the overall production of oil and gas in 2024 will be close to the record year 2004 – partly due to the Johan Sverdrup field and because the Johan Castberg field in the Barents Sea is scheduled to come on stream in 2022. Gas will account for about half of 2024 production.

Overall production declined somewhat in 2019 compared with 2018. This was caused by lower gas production than expected – but the NPD expects this to turn around in 2020.

The Johan Sverdrup field, which came on stream in autumn 2019, is the third largest oilfield on the shelf and already accounts for around 20% of Norwegian oil production.

The Oda, Trestakk and Utgard fields also came on stream in 2019. All three are subsea developments tied into existing host fields.

In 2019, plans for development and operation (PDOs) were approved for seven fields. The largest was the second development stage of Johan Sverdrup.

In 2019, investments are estimated at around $16.9 billion, 17% higher than in 2018. The same level is expected in 2020.

The NPD estimates that 48% of resources have been produced. Of these, decisions have already been made to produce around 18%.

The NPD’s projection of undiscovered resources remains steady for the North Sea and Norwegian Sea, while expectations have been lowered in the southeast Barents Sea due to dry wells. However, expectations in central parts of the Barents Sea have been increased due to the mapping of several prospects and ‘much good work in the production licences’.

In the summer of 2019, the NPD collected 3D seismic data in the northeastern part of the Barents Sea, along the border with Russia. These data are currently being processed.

The Seabed Minerals Act entered into force in July 2019 to facilitate extraction of mineral deposits on the shelf. The NPD has been preparing an overview of existing data and assisting the ministry in a potential opening process.

The NPD collected samples and mapped the topography on the seabed in parts of the Norwegian Sea in both 2018 and 2019. Sulphide and manganese crust deposits were proven.

Shearwater wins 3D project offshore The Gambia Shearwater GeoServices has won a 3D Isometrix seismic acquisition project offshore The Gambia for client FAR Gambia.

The one-month survey will cover parts of Block A5 offshore Gambia in the rapidly emerging and prolific Mauritania, 22

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Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Conakry (MSGBC) basin.

It will be acquired by the SW Amundsen and provide new seismic data over a shallow-water area and connect with existing seismic data to provide full coverage of the A5 Block.

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‘We are excited to be providing high-quality Isometrix multi-sensor data for this area for the first time,’ Irene Waage Basili, CEO of Shearwater, said. ‘This will be our second project in the MSGBC basin this year after working at the worldclass Sangomar field directly to the north.’

INDUSTRY NEWS

PGS to acquire new data offshore Congo New PGS 3D surveys and reprocessing of existing data offshore Congo is supporting the Republic of Congo’s promotion of all open blocks, including five blocks in the interior Cuvette basin and ten blocks in the Congo coastal basin.

Seven of the coastal basin blocks are offshore and already extensively covered

by PGS data.

PGS and SNPC, the Congo national oil company, are planning to acquire a new regional MC3D survey over the shallow-water Congo Shelf area ‘Peu Profund’, to provide extensive new seismic data coverage over this highly prospective and producing area.

‘The new data will enhance pre-salt imaging and improve our knowledge of the post-salt opportunities, unlocking plays and prospects not imaged fully by the existing data,’ Christine Roche, NV manager Africa at PGS, said.

SNPC and PGS are also planning to acquire a new MC3D survey on the Congo Shelf in 2020. The new data will enhance pre-salt imaging and improve knowledge of the post-salt opportunities, unlocking new plays and prospects.

In 2019 PGS reprocessed a large volume of seismic data within the offshore area of the Congo coastal basin. The company used a modern reprocessing flow to produce a single merged dataset, Congo

MegaSurveyPlus, significantly upgrading the previous regional coverage.

‘The imaging results have revitalized the entire basin area with an improved and consistent regional geological perspective,’ PGS said. The reprocessed 3D dataset is tied to wells to allow a regional interpretation and identification of prospects, plays and migration paths, it added.

The coastal basin area presents presalt plays and rift structures in prolific shallow-water acreage, close to existing

infrastructure. Mesozoic salt basins with associated fields and discoveries extend across this area to the present-day onshore.

The Congo MegaSurveyPlus comprises 12 original 3D surveys, all reprocessed from field data using the latest broadband processing techniques to deliver PSDM and prestack volumes and clearer images.

Increased bandwidth and signal fidelity will ensure better velocity models and final images that are more reliable, PGS said.

An overview of the datasets offshore Congo that PGS has helped to acquire.

Polarcus wins contracts in Asia Pacific and offshore Brazil Polarcus has won an XArray marine seismic survey in the Asia Pacific region.

The project will start in the second quarter of 2020 and will take around four months to complete.

The company has also won a 4D survey offshore Brazil starting in the third quarter of 2020 which will take around 10 months to complete. The programme will include 4D acquisition in obstructed areas with a multi-azimuth component.

Finally, Polarcus has reported fourth quarter vessel utilization of 71%, compared with 96% in Q4 2018.

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Of 2019 vessel time, contract seismic accounted for 64% of vessel time, multi-client 7%, transit 13%, yard 11% and standby 5%. This compares with 2018 vessel time of 96% on contract seismic, 0% on multi-client, 2% transit, 2% yard and 0% standby.

Full-year vessel utilization was 79%, compared to 87% in 2018. Of this contract seismic was 77%, multi-client 2%, transit 13%, yard 5% and standby 3%.

The vessel Polarcus Nadia is excluded from the vessel utilization figures as it is currently stacked.

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UK attracts more than 100 applications for 32nd licensing round The UK’s latest offshore licensing round has attracted 104 applications covering 245 blocks or part-blocks across the main producing areas of the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS).

The 32nd UK Offshore Licensing Round, which closed on 12 November 2019, offered acreage in the Central North Sea, Northern North Sea, Southern North Sea and the West of Shetlands. Applications were received from 71 companies ranging from multinationals to new country entrants.

As part of its continued commitment to improving access to quality data and insights, the OGA made a significant volume of data available in support of the 32nd Round. The data sets were

made available through the UK National Data Repository (NDR) and the OGA website.

Dr Nick Richardson, head of exploration and new ventures at the OGA, said: ‘The response to the round has been very positive, exceeding the interest received for the 30th Offshore Licensing Round which was also in the more mature areas of the UKCS. We look forward to seeing how the data released in support of the round has been used to support the applications submitted.’

The OGA is expected to make awards in Q2 2020. The OGA said that it is now engaging with industry on the timing and nature of the 33rd round, which is unlikely to take place in 2020.

PGS releases data from two Norwegian Sea surveys

Shearwater wins 3D survey offshore Malaysia

Fast-track seismic data is now available from PGS’ Draugen survey and first data is available from its Trøndelag platform project.

The Trøndelag Platform and Draugen surveys in the Norwegian Sea cover an underexplored 10,500 km2 area of the Norwegian Sea. ‘We hope to identify new plays and migration pathways with the first modern broadband 3D dataset over this area,’ Ruben Janssen, new ventures manager Europe at PGS, said. ‘Large parts of this area have never been covered by 3D data before.’

Draugen and the larger regional 3D GeoStreamer survey over the Trøndelag platform were mapped with a triple source to maximize data density. The results are expected to unlock the potential of both licensed blocks and APA areas, PGS said.

The data will also be extremely useful for regional evaluations. This area has mainly Jurassic targets but may have potential in unproven presalt plays in the Permian, the company added.

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Shearwater GeoServices has won a hybrid node and towed streamer survey from client Repsol offshore Malaysia.

The survey is scheduled for the first quarter of 2020 and will take several months. The project covers approx.

1000 km2 of ocean bottom and towed streamer seismic data on Repsol’s operated bock offshore Peninsula Malaysia.

The multi-purpose vessel SW Vespucci will acquire the seismic data using Flexisource triple source in combination with Qmarine towed-streamer acquisition and ocean bottom nodes.

‘By combining ocean bottom and towed-streamer seismic data using an MPV we are offering our customer an innovative and efficient hybrid solution

for acquisition of high-quality seismic data at a field which has numerous oil installations,’ Irene Waage Basilli, CEO of Shearwater, said. ‘This is the second contract awarded to us in recent weeks in South East Asia.’

Meanwhile, Shearwater has been awarded a combined 2D and 3D broadband marine seismic acquisition campaign by ONGC in eastern offshore India. The survey covers 1600 km2 of 3D and 800 km of 2D data in a deepwater area of the Bay of Bengal.

The contract will be carried out in the first half of 2020. ‘We are pleased to return to work with ONGC in India for a fourth consecutive season,’ Basilli said.

Shearwater will acquire 1000 km2 of towed streamer and OBN data.

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INDUSTRY NEWS

Global production costs have fallen sharply, says Rystad Operational production costs in the oil and gas industry have fallen across the globe with the UK emerging as a cost-cutting powerhouse, according to research from Rystad Energy.

From 2014 to 2018 the UK reduced operational production costs by 31%, followed by Norway (19%) and the US (15%).

‘The reduction in operating expenditure is largely the result of offshore regions, such as the United Kingdom, Brazil, Nigeria, Angola, the Gulf of Mexico and Norway, feeling the squeeze of

uncertain oil prices, which in turn has driven operators and contractors to nurture operational improvements in pursuit of lower unit prices,’ Sara Sottilotta, oilfield service analyst at Rystad Energy, said.

Secondly, with a greater focus on strategic planning, more efficient maintenance management and improved implementation of technology, opex per barrel of oil equivalent (boe) has fallen, it added.

‘The UK has experienced the greatest reduction in opex per boe, falling from more than $30 per barrel in 2014 to $16 per barrel in 2019. The drop is attributable

to the general increase in production and the falling share of production from mature fields as new fields came on stream and old fields were shut in,’ Sottilotta said.

Brazil experienced the second greatest drop in opex per boe, from $16 per boe in 2014 to $11 per boe in 2019. This reduction was driven primarily by a significant increase in production, especially from the giant Lula field. In contrast, Mexico’s operating cost per barrel has risen by 86% since 2016, the result of decreasing production and an increasing share of production from mature fields.

TGS launches Nigeria’s first MB&SS study TGS is launching Nigeria’s first regional multi-client multibeam and seafloor sampling (MB&SS) study.

The project, with partner PetroData, will cover an area of approximately 80,000 km2 of the offshore Niger Delta and will incorporate around 150 cores from the seabed, the location of which is based on multibeam backscatter anomalies.

Much of this area is also covered

by TGS’ NGRE19 2D seismic data that was reprocessed earlier in 2019 to take advantage of the latest seismic imaging techniques. Final results of the new MB&SS programme will be available early in Q2 2020.

Kristian Johansen, CEO at TGS, said, ‘The data generated from SeaSeep technology is proving to be a complementary and valuable addition to our multi-client

library. The multibeam, coring and geochemical analysis provides our customers

with further insight into and understanding of regional prospectivity. After its successful implementation in the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil and across the MSGBC basin, we are pleased to expand the use of this technology into West Africa’s most prolific hydrocarbon province.’

Graham Mayhew, VP – Africa, Mediterranean and Middle East at TGS, said: ‘The deepwater area offers vast potential, with plenty of open acreage opportunities.

This programme will help to derisk the offshore region and speed up exploration decision-making in an area which is likely to see a growing level of licensing activity in the near future.’

CGG set to report strong Q4 earnings CGG has said that it expects fourth quarter 2019 segment revenue of $393 million, with Geoscience revenues of around $105 million, sequentially up 11%; multi-client sales of around $166 million and aftersales of around $96 million.

The company anticipates fourth quarter 2019 segment equipment sales of around $121 million, sequentially up 25%.

Full-year 2019 segment group revenue is expected to be $1.4

billion, up 14% year on year.

CGG anticipates positive net cash flow around $185 million, the first time it has reported positive cashflow since 2012.

CGG anticipates year-end 2019 net debt to be around $584 million. The group’s liquidity was at $611 million at the end of 2019.

Meanwhile, CGG has completed its exit from the seabed data acquisition business and terminated its Seabed Geo-

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solutions’ joint venture agreement with Fugro on 31 December, 2019.

The company has agreed to transfer its 40% shareholding in Seabed Geosolutions to Fugro before the end of the first quarter of 2020. It will conclude its financial commitments to Seabed Geosolutions by paying $35 million to joint venture partner Fugro. Sophie Zurquiyah, CEO, CGG, said: ‘I am very proud of the performance in 2019.’

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UK Oil and Gas Authority appoints new director of operations The UK Oil and Gas Authority has appointed Scott Robertson as director of operations, responsible for the OGA’s exploration, production, decommissioning and technology agenda. He joined the OGA in June 2015 after 20 years of upstream operator experience predominantly in the UK North Sea. In his previous role at the OGA, Robertson developed and implemented the OGA’s Asset Stewardship Strategy and was responsible for stewarding the large portfolio of oil and gas activity in the Central North Sea.

Robertson replaces Gunther Newcombe, who will be retiring in March 2020.

Meanwhile, Pauline Innes has been appointed head of decommissioning.

Innes has worked for the Scottish Government in social and economic policy before joining the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) in 2015 to work in offshore oil and gas decommissioning.

Finally, Alistair Macfarlane has been promoted to area manager for the Southern North Sea and Eastern Irish

ExxonMobil plans seismic survey offshore Egypt

TGS purchases US log databases and 3D surveys

ExxonMobil is planning to carry out a seismic survey over the 1.7 million acres it has licensed offshore Egypt.

The company’s new licence includes acreage in the 1.2 million-acre North Marakia offshore block, located approx. 8 km offshore Egypt’s northern coast in the Herodotus basin. The remaining 543,000 acres is in the North East El Amriya Offshore block in the Nile Delta.

Acquisition of seismic data is scheduled to begin in 2020.

‘ExxonMobil has been a partner in Egypt’s growth for more than 115 years, and these awards reaffirm our commitment to pursuing high-quality opportunities in the country,’ Hesham Elamroussy, chairman and managing director of ExxonMobil Egypt, said.

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TGS has purchased all US onshore petrophysical log database and associated intellectual property from Petrophysical Solutions Inc. These petrophysical interpretations, derived from well log and core analysis relationships in some 1400 wells within key unconventional basins will be added to the current TGS data library. Customers will benefit from high-quality interpretation to aid in reducing risks, increase the probability of drilling successes and increase production by optimizing landing zones, wellbore trajectories and completion designs.

Kristian Johansen, CEO at TGS, said, ‘This data acquisition supports critical points in our strategy to provide our customers with industry-leading basin and regional knowledge, prospect ranking and reservoir evaluation. Accurate parameters determined from petrophysical analysis will make our customers’ completion programmes more successful. It will further strengthen TGS’ position as the leading supplier of enhanced well data onshore US.’ TGS said that it would bring additional value to this data by utilizing LAS Plus (LAS+) premium digital well logs as a starting point for petrophysical interpretation. ‘LAS+ are edited, depth-corrected FEBRUARY

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Sea. Macfarlane has been with the OGA since May 2016 as business development manager for the Central North Sea Team and was involved in delivering the OGA’s area plans and providing commercial guidance to industry. Macfarlane is a qualified accountant with 30 years’ experience in finance, commercial, planning and change management. He has held senior leadership and director roles for a variety of upstream E&P companies and oil service businesses both in the UK and internationally.

and composed to provide curves with maximum depth coverage, assuring that the data used in the creation of the resulting petrophysical interpretation is of the highest quality and accuracy,’ said TGS. The company added that the petrophysical logs will enhance TGS’ data and analytics efforts, most notably ARLAS – Analytics Ready LAS, by offering models calibrated on actual rock samples to constrain machine learning algorithms while filling gaps of log curves and calculating the curve responses of missing log runs.

Meanwhile, TGS has purchased more than 2080 km2 of onshore 3D seismic surveys from a US-based E&P company.

This transaction supports TGS’ onshore growth strategy with the addition of key surveys, most notably in the SCOOP-STACK of the Anadarko Basin, Powder River Basin, and Permian Basin.

Johansen said: ‘These new datasets strengthen our position in core areas of onshore US and expand our library coverage in new prospective areas. In combination with our extensive library of enhanced well data products, including log reconstruction via machine learning (ARLAS), we continue to offer the most complete subsurface data to shale players in the US.’

INDUSTRY NEWS

Discover Geoscience completes Gulf of Papua seismic study

Discover Geoscience has completed the Gulf of Papua Prospectivity Study for client Searcher Seismic.

The project consists of a tectono-stratigraphic framework, tectonostratigraphic elements, facies and EOD mapping, charge modelling plus play concepts and leads inventory.

The study is being packaged as an integrated multi-disciplinary report of the hydrocarbon prospectivity potential

BRIEFS Seabird has won a contract for a 3D survey in Asia. The survey is due to start at the end of Q1 and is expected to be completed in Q2 this year. Seabird will also enter into a framework agreement with the customer, under which further work may be awarded.

across the entire Gulf of Papua utilizing Searcher’s Gulf of Papua datasets.

The Searcher data library in Papua New Guinea includes 77,910 km of 2D seismic data (newly acquired and reprocessed), 1795 km2 of 3D seismic reprocessing, 60,690 km2 of airborne gravity, magnetic and gradiometry data and a geochemical study covering the entire Gulf of Papua.

The Gulf of Papua covers more than 187,000 km2 with only 27 wildcat exploration wells drilled to date in shallow water; much of the region remains underexplored.

Simon Crellin, sales director for Searcher, said: ‘Modern seismic data has enabled deeper imaging of distinctive tectonic packages and basement which has been utilized in the study, leading to the identification of several new plays within the Gulf of Papua. The study has revealed significant prospectivity in this frontier region. Leveraging high-quality seismic data, drop cores, dredge samples, seep data and geochemical analysis within this study has enabled us to build a comprehensive leads inventory for the Gulf of Papua.’

Premier Oil has announced the proposed acquisitions of the Andrew Area and Shearwater North Sea assets from BP for $625 million, and an additional 25% interest in the Premier-operated Tolmount Area in the North Sea from Dana for $191 million plus contingent payments of up to $55 million.

Eni has signed a production sharing contract to explore the Dumre Block, onshore Albania after a tender launched in September 2019 by the Albanian National Agency for Natural Resources.

The Dumre Block covers 587 km2 and is located 40 km south of Tirana in a ‘proven’ hydrocarbon area with good oil prospectivity.

Weatherford International has completed its financial restructuring and emerged from chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company has reduced approx. $6.2 billion of debt, secured $2.6 billion in exit financing facilities, including a $450 million revolving credit facility, secured a $195 million letter of credit facility, and more than $900 million of liquidity. New board members have been appointed including Thomas R. Bates (chairman), Jr, John F. Glick, Neal P. Goldman, Gordon T. Hall, Mark A. McCollum, Jacqueline Mutschler, and Charles M. Sledge.

Schlumberger to set emissions cutting target Schlumberger has announced its commitment to setting a science-based target to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Schlumberger’s commitment has been submitted to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). In line with the defined criteria, SLB will define its reduction target by 2021.

Science-based targets in line with the latest climate science must meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, developed in 2016 by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that seeks to reduce GHG

emissions. The Paris Agreement focuses on limiting global warming to well-below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

Olivier Le Peuch, Schlumberger CEO, said: ‘The energy industry has a key role to play in reducing the effects of climate change. Schlumberger seeks to lead positive, measurable changes in GHG emissions within the industry to help reduce climate change.’

The SBTi is a collaboration between the Carbon Disclosure Project, the United Nations Global Compact, the World Resources Institute, and the World Wide Fund for Natur.

FIRST

Hibiscus Petroleum has completed acquisition of North Sea blocks 15/18d and 15/19b in production licence P2366 from United Oil & Gas and Swift Exploration for £5.9 million. The blocks are located offshore in the UK sector of the North Sea, 250 km northeast of Aberdeen.

They include the Crown Discovery which consists of 2C contingent resources that range between 4 to 8 million barrels of oil.

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INDUSTRY NEWS

Oil finds are announced offshore Guyana and Suriname

Proprietary seismic inversion technology has helped to define ExxonMobil’s oil discovery in the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana, 10 km southeast of the newly producing Liza field.

The Mako-1 well, drilled in 1620 m of water, encountered 50 m of high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoir. The 15th discovery in the Stabroek block adds to the previously announced estimated recoverable resource of more than 6 billion oil-equivalent barrels there.

Mike Cousins, senior vice president of exploration and new ventures at Exx-

onMobil, said: ‘Our proprietary full-wave seismic inversion technology continues to help us better define our discovered resource and move rapidly to the development phase.’

A third development in the Payara field north of the Liza discoveries could start as early as 2023, reaching an estimated 220,000 barrels of oil per day.

ExxonMobil said that four drillships are continuing to explore and appraise new resources offshore Guyana.

Meanwhile, Tullow Oil’s Carapa-1 exploration well, drilled on the Kanuku licence offshore Guyana, has encountered approx. 4 m of net oil pay and has extended the prolific Cretaceous oil play into the group’s Guyana acreage.

Wireline logging, pressure testing and sampling of reservoir fluid indicate oil in Upper Cretaceous age sand.

The Carapa oil discovery suggests the extension of the Cretaceous oil play

from the Stabroek licence southwards into the Kanuku licence.

Mark MacFarlane, chief operating officer at Tullow, said: ‘We will now integrate the results of the three exploration wells drilled in these adjacent licences into our Guyana and Suriname geological and geophysical models before deciding the future work programme.’

Repsol is the operator of the Kanuku block with a 37.5% stake. Tullow Guyana also holds a 37.5% stake and Total holds 25%.

Finally, Total and Apache have made an oil discovery on Block 58 offshore Suriname, on trend with big discoveries in the adjacent Stabroek block in Guyana. The Maka Central-1 well was drilled to a water depth of about 1000 m and encountered more than 123 m net pay of high-quality light oil and gas rich condensate net pay in multiple stacked reservoirs in Upper Cretaceous Campanian and Santonian formations.

UK energy integration will cut emissions says OGA report The UK Oil and Gas Authority’s UKCS Energy Integration: Interim Findings report has found that partnering between oil and gas, renewables, hydrogen and carbon capture can accelerate energy transition and reduce carbon emissions.

The report discusses the first phase of the UKCS Energy Integration project, led by the OGA, considering how oil and gas infrastructure and capabilities can be leveraged for carbon capture and storage (CCS) and to support renewable energy production and hydrogen generation, transportation and storage.

The report emphasises that opportunities for UKCS deployment are plentiful, diverse and location-specific. Additionally, the UK has significant wind power potential, untapped carbon storage capacity, and extensive oil and gas infrastructure in place.

The report finds that platform electrification could significantly reduce emis28

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sions on oil and gas installations by using low-carbon electricity, including directly from offshore wind farms, to replace generation from gas and diesel.

Gas-to-wire (GtW) would enable gas to be converted to electricity offshore and transported using existing windfarm cables. It is particularly suited to the Southern North Sea and East Irish Sea. Opportunities for oil and gas synergies with CCS projects is very significant.

Hydrogen has feasible production avenues through both ‘blue’ hydrogen (produced by natural gas reforming) and ‘green’ hydrogen (electrolysis produced by renewables), enabling decarbonization of power, heat and transport.

Offshore energy hubs can help to scale up net-zero energy solutions, e.g. by allowing hydrogen to be generated offshore using windfarms and stored in reservoirs to be transported to shore using oil and gas

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The OGA highlights the potential of offshore wind farms in the UK.

infrastructure. Multiple sites across the UK would be suited to energy hubs.

Phase 1 of the project was completed

by Lloyd’s Register (LR). The OGA has appointed EY to support delivery of phase two. The project will conclude in Q2 2020, after which a final report will be published.

Special Topic

RESERVOIR MONITORING

Reservoir monitoring is crucial to the future of the industry as energy companies respond to the challenge of optimizing their fields while their infrastructure is still operational. Techniques include life-of-field seismic surveillance, time-lapse seismic 4D monitoring and gravimetric monitoring. Ocean bottom seismic techniques are continuing to evolve fast. Over the last few years monitoring techniques have become more precise owing to the evolution of equipment that can be deployed in configurations specific to each reservoir.

Thomas L. Davis demonstrates how multi-component seismic data can be used to identify areas of greater open fracture density in the Niobrara Formation.

Ngoc-Tuyen Cao et al investigate alternative approaches to calculate the maximum magnitude independent of the injection volumes and test mining methodology on available datasets from the oil and gas industry.

Tony Hallam et al demonstrate how 4D data for close-the-loop workflows could improve the reservoir model at Volve by incorporating the 4D seismic predictions of reservoir water sweep into a model update.

Garth Naldrett et al describe the deployment of permanently installed DAS VSP in subsea wells that have become feasible through the improved performance of the Carina sensing technology.

Irina Nizkous et al discuss the application of advanced microseismic analysis to monitor the evolution of stress and deformation as well as estimate maximum potential magnitude of seismic events in an active fault.

Lee Jean Wong et al demonstrate how the tiered data integration approach has maximized the value of the asset and optimized the value of individual datasets.

Submit an article

Special Topic overview January

Land Seismic

First Break Special Topics are covered by a mix of original articles dealing with case studies and the latest technology. Contributions to a Special Topic in First Break can be sent directly to the editorial office (firstbreak@eage.org). Submissions will be considered for publication by the editor.

February

Reservoir Monitoring

March

Modelling / Interpretation

April

Passive Seismic / Unconventionals

May

Petroleum Geology

June

Delivering for the Energy Challenge: Today and Tomorrow

It is also possible to submit a Technical Article to First Break. Technical Articles are subject to a peer review process and should be submitted via EAGE’s ScholarOne website: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/fb

July

Machine Learning

August

Near Surface Geoscience

September

Reservoir Geoscience and Engineering

October

Energy Transition

November

Marine Seismic & EM

December

Data Processing

You can find the First Break author guidelines online at www.firstbreak.org/guidelines.

More Special Topics may be added during the course of the year.

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FEATURE

GeoDRIVE – a high performance computing flexible platform for seismic applications Suha N. Kayum, Thierry Tonellot, Vincent Etienne, Ali Momin, Ghada Sindi, Maxim Dmitriev and Hussain Salim discuss the flexibility and modularity of the GeoDRIVE HPC application. Lead author Suha N. Kayum, from Saudi Aramco, won the ‘Best Paper Recognition Award’ from the technical committee of the EAGE Workshop on High Performance Computing. The paper was presented at the workshop in Dubai on 7-9 October, 2019.

Abstract GeoDRIVE, a high performance computing (HPC) software framework tailored to massive seismic applications and supercomputers is presented. The paper discusses the flexibility and modularity of the application along with optimized HPC features. GeoDRIVE’s versatile design, associated to exascale computing capabilities, unlocks new classes of applications that significantly improve geoscientists’ abilities to understand, locate and characterize challenging targets in complex settings.

As a result, uncertainties in subsurface models are reduced both quantitatively and qualitatively, along with reduced drilling risks and improved prospect generation.

Introduction Every year Saudi Aramco acquires billions of seismic traces, amounting to approximately 3 terabytes of daily volume (Din, 2017). Advances in seismic acquisition technology mostly improve data quality and resolution by increasing the sampling in the receiver and shot domains. Consequently, the volume of new seismic data acquired will continually increase over the years.

Every trace acquired undergoes a standard processing sequence, comprising trace editing, noise elimination and prestack time migration (PSTM). More advanced processing flow, from prestack depth migration to full waveform inversion (FWI) are also applied to the seismic traces depending on the exploration goals and the geological settings.

The computational cost of these advanced workflows increases exponentially compared to the PSTM baseline as shown in Figure 1a, while the need in turnaround time to fit our production

timeline remains constant. As a result, an exascale computational challenge is faced that not only requires deploying very large supercomputing systems with leading edge technology as illustrated in Figure 1b, but to also have access to software able to efficiently use them. In a context where the majority of exascale systems are based on hybrid Central Processing Unit (CPU)-Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) architectures, and where file systems and memory hierarchies are increasingly complex, the development of sustainable, hardware-efficient and maintainable seismic processing and imaging software is a new challenge that cannot be overlooked.

Saudi Aramco’s in-house integrated geophysical imaging and model-building framework GeoDRIVE has been designed from inception to provide production geoscientists with the most advanced wave-equation based depth imaging workflows while addressing these computational and development challenges.

This paper introduces GeoDRIVE’s key features and illustrates them on production-scale applications.

A Versatile Architecture for Seismic Imaging The architecture of GeoDRIVE is carefully designed to build a versatile seismic imaging platform and to tackle production-scale applications. Certain constraints are considered, which lead to choices in the program design shown in Table 1.

Based on the design choices mentioned in Table 1, GeoDRIVE is designed to be flexible and modular, as shown in Figure 2, where the integration of different components is key. This design facilitates the timely ability and agility in being up to date with the latest co-design hardware-software research findings.

Figure 1 (a) The link between seismic modeling and HPC (b) Growth of computational performance (TOP500, June 2019).

1

Saudi Aramco

*

Corresponding author, E-mail: suha.kayum.1@aramco.com

DOI: 10.3997/1365-2397.fb2020015

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Constraints

Design Choices

• Enable complex wave-equation based depth imaging flows • High computational efficiency • Hardware elasticity • High modularity and reusability • Robust numerical methods • Accurate and stable numerical schemes • Extensibility

• C++ object-oriented design • Hardware: CPU/GPU/Accelerators • MPI/OpenMP • NUMA aware • Domain Decomposition • Multilayer Buffer System for I/O operations • Compression

Table 1 Constraints and the resulting design choices in the GeoDRIVE design.

Figure 2 GeoDRIVE architecture.

Figure 3 Required class of imaging method as a function of the geological settings.

Wave equation based seismic imaging workflows such as reverse time migration (RTM), least-squares RTM or FWI have the potential to dramatically increase seismic data value.

Their high computational cost, however, usually results in compromises in the wave equation physics (acoustic, elastic, etc.) and limits their application at scale. Moreover, depending on the dataset being processed, the class of method required can vary drastically. For instance, offshore subsalt imaging might benefit from elastic isotropic RTM while simpler isotropic 98

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acoustic RTM would be sufficient for simple overburden (Figure 3).

The primary goal of GeoDRIVE is to offer production users the ability to rapidly apply the main classes of depth imaging methods in one single platform. GeoDRIVE relies on a thorough object model defining high-level application programming interface (API) for the main objects, such as for instance wave equation propagators, seismic data and basic geometry components. Another API defines how these objects can be combined

FEATURE

and composed into the many end-user applications such as Modelling, RTM, FWI, etc. This design enables the high performance implementation of different objects customized for the targeted hardware without compromising the Geophysical correctness nor the user friendliness.

Time domain finite differences (TDFD) wave equation solvers are popular in our field due to their simple stencil based implementation on a Cartesian grid and their parallel nature in the shot domain. This simplicity, however, usually results in low flop per byte ratio computations, non-contiguous memory access and hence a low utilization of available computing resources. Depending on the targeted hardware, i.e. CPU, GPU, Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), etc. special consideration in the implementation is taken into account to guarantee optimal performance. Figure 4 illustrates how the performance of a TDFD wave equation kernel version improves further when using temporal versus spatial cache blocking. GeoDRIVE often comprises several implementations of the same object that can be implemented through a dynamic plugin mechanism to ensure that the most optimal implementation will be used for the selected application at runtime.

During the RTM process a forward-propagated source wave field is correlated at regular time steps with a back-propagated receiver wave field. Synchronization of both wave fields results in very large volume of I/O that disrupts the efficiency of typical supercomputer file systems. To increase I/O bandwidth, high-end supercomputers are equipped with hierarchical storage subsystems such as Solid State Drive-based Burst Buffers. This boost in I/O bandwidth opens new opportunities to reduce runtime or increase the problem scale by increasing the number of nodes

performing I/O and overlap I/O with computation when possible.

A new component for a multi-layer buffering system (MLBS) was thus developed to efficiently use a multiple layer of memory and I/O buffering system to reverse propagation in time. Figure 5 shows a reduction in runtime in I/O with the MLBS implementation and a nearly complete overlap of the read-and-write operations. Leveraging on GeoDRIVE’s abstract object model definition, the implementation of MLBS and the propagator’s computational implementation (acoustic, elastic, etc.) are fully independent. Additionally, fast FPGA-based compression methods are currently being investigated.

Examples of production-scale applications Several milestones have been accomplished since the beginning of GeoDRIVE. Two large-scale applications are shared and discussed in this section.

Large-scale 3D elastic seismic modelling

An elastic modelling run was conducted on Shaheen II, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) supercomputer. The machine is a Cray XC40 with 6174 Haswell nodes and each node is equipped with a total of 32 compute cores. The run used 2434 compute nodes in parallel. 3D isotropic P-wave velocity, S-wave velocity, and density models were built with geological stratigraphic forward modelling. The processing of elastic data is highly challenging and more computationally intensive compared to acoustic data. This is because surface waves absent in acoustic waves, are present in elastic data and severely obscure reflections. Figure 6 shows a 3D view of the S-wave velocity model. A regular acquisition geometry with a maximum offset of 5 km inline and crossline is considered. The shot locations follow an orthogonal design to the receiver distribution: 50m spacing between shot and 100m between receiver lines. In total, 162,300 distinct shots are computed. Considering there are at most 20,301 receivers per shots, the total number of seismic traces is 3.3 billion per component.

100 Hz reverse time migration

Figure 4 Performance scalability of temporal blocking implementation (red) versus spatial blocking (Akbudak et al., 2019).

Figure 5 Comparison of RTM performances as a function of the I/O acceleration technology (Alturkestani et al., 2019).

An RTM application with a maximum frequency of 100 Hz using GeoDRIVE was run on Shaheen II utilizing its maximum computational capability. In addition to the fast network that

Figure 6 S-wave velocity model dimensions are 17 km (inline) x 14.3 km (crossline) x 5.2 km (depth).

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(a)

(b)

Figure 7 (a) 30 Hz RTM (b) 100 Hz RTM.

Shaheen II provides, the success of this massive run depended on several of the design choices presented in Table 1. Factors such as the domain decomposition were important due to the large size of the computational domain. This enabled the large grid to be distributed across several nodes. Lossy compression was used to reduce the size of the regularly outputted files (wave field snapshots), which led to savings on storage requirements and a possible reduction in IO runtime. Additionally, the disk operations bottleneck was reduced with the Multilayer Buffer System implementation (Alturkestani et al., 2018) where GeoDRIVE caches in/out datasets are migrated into the CPU main memory from/to slower storage media. Storage media can be parallel file systems (e.g., Lustre), solid-state drive (e.g., Burst Buffer) or non-volatile RAM. With this run, GeoDRIVE was able to achieve an unprecedented resolution of 7.5 m. Figure 7a illustrates the high resolution achieved from this run compared to the standard resolution Figure 7b. The difference in quality between a low and high-resolution image is clear. This run constitutes the world’s first wave-based ultra-resolution imaging application on such a large scale.

implementation, enabling highly customized applications for optimal performance. The architecture of GeoDRIVE is strategically designed to build a versatile seismic imaging platform and to tackle production-scale applications of which two such applications are described in this paper. In addition to tailoring GeoDRIVE for production users, it facilitates the integration and testing of proprietary research implementations. With this capability, GeoDRIVE serves as a research and collaboration platform enabling the strengthening of partnerships and collaboration with both internal and external entities.

Conclusions The anticipated continuous increase in volume of seismic data and the advancement in processing workflows forms a high computational challenge. Supercomputing systems capable of addressing this challenge involve complex hybrid computing architecture and I/O hierarchies. The design and deployment of such large-scale supercomputing systems must also be associated with the development and co-design of advanced software.

GeoDRIVE is an agile model-building framework designed for exascale seismic imaging requirements. It relies on a versatile architecture that separates the object model description from the

Akbudak, K., Ltaief, H., Etienne, V., Abdelkhalak, R., Tonellot, T. and

Acknowledgements The authors would like to acknowledge the support of Saudi Aramco’s Emad Janoubi, Husain Shakhs, the work conducted as part of the Saudi Aramco/KAUST Exawave research collaboration and the collaboration with the King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals on FPGA. Additionally, the authors would like to acknowledge the support of the KAUST Supercomputing Laboratory and the usage of KAUST Shaheen II supercomputer for several of the runs presented.

References

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Keyes, D. [2019]. Asynchronous Computations for Solving the Acoustic Wave Propagation Equation, submitted to International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications Alturkestani, T., Tonellot, T., Etienne, V. and Ltaief, H. [2018]. Towards Smoothing Data Movement Between RAM and Storage. International Supercomputing Conference, Abstracts.

Din, J. [2017]. Seismic: Pushing the boundaries in frontier exploration, Dimensions International.

Dimensions International [2018].19-21.

TOP500 Supercomputer Sites, http://www.top500.org/.

CALENDAR

CALENDAR OF EVENTS 28-30 JUN

First EAGE Conference on Guyana Basins

www.eage.org Georgetown, Guyana

February 2020 10-12 Feb

Fifth EAGE Workshop on Rock Physics www.eage.org

Milan

Italy

11-13 Feb

Fourth EAGE Naturally Fractured Reservoir Workshop www.eage.org

Ras Al Khaimah

United Arab Emirates

13 Feb

EAGE Young Professional Meeting Oslo www.eage.org

Oslo

Norway

17-18 Feb

EAGE Workshop on The Interpretation of Attributes to Impact Decision Making www.eage.org

Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia

24-26 Feb

SPE/EAGE Reservoir Lifecycle Workshop www.eage.org

Abu Dhabi

United Arab Emirates

25-27 Feb

1st AAPG/EAGE Papua New Guinea Petroleum Geoscience Conference & Exhibition www.eage.org

Port Moresby

Papua New Guinea

29 Feb

KEGS 2020 Symposium Success from Innovation

Toronto

Canada

2-4 Mar

The 20 th North Sea Decommissioning Conference https://npf.no/konferansen/the-20th-north-sea-decommissioning-conference

Stavanger

Norway

2-8 Mar

36th International Geological Congress

New Delhi

India

9-11 Mar

First EAGE Workshop on Fibre Optic Sensing www.eage.org

Amsterdam

Netherlands

16-19 Mar

GEO 2020

Manama

Bahrain

23-26 Mar

Eighth EAGE Workshop on Passive Seismic www.eage.org

Prague

Czech Republic

29 Mar 2 Apr

SAGEEP 2020 www.sageep.org

Denver

United States

30 Mar 1 Apr

Fifth EAGE Eastern Africa Petroleum Geoscience Forum www.eage.org

Cape Town

South Africa

March 2020

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April 2020 6-8 Apr

EAGE Workshop on Quantifying Uncertainty in Depth Imaging www.eage.org

Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia

6-9 Apr

EAGE Saint Petersburg 2020 Geosciences: Converting Knowledge into Resources www.eage.org

Saint Petersburg

Russia

6-9 Apr

First EAGE Digitalization Conference and Exhibition www.eage.org

Vienna

Austria

7 Apr

Marine Technologies 2020 2 nd scientific workshop www.eage.org

Saint Petersburg

Russia

19-21 Apr

EAGE Seabed Seismic Today: from Acquisition to Application www.eage.org

Abu Dhabi

United Arab Emirates

20-22 Apr

3 rd Asia Pacific Meeting on Near Surface Geoscience & Engineering www.eage.org

Chiang Mai

Thailand

7-9 May

GISTAM 2020 6th International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management www.gistam.org

Prague

Czech Republic

12-14 May

5th AAPG/EAGE Myanmar Oil & Gas Conference www.eage.org

Yangon

Myanmar

12-14 May

Third EAGE Workshop on Offshore Development and Exploration in Mexico www.eage.org

Merida

Mexico

12-16 May

EAGE Engineering & Mining Geophysics 2020 www.eage.org

Perm

Russia

21-22 May

13 th SAOGIET Congress

Bobrka

Poland

8 Jun

YP Summit 2020 www.yp-summit.org

Amsterdam

Netherlands

8-11 Jun

82nd EAGE Conference & Exhibition 2020 www.eage.org

Amsterdam

Netherlands

25-26 Jun

First EAGE/NAPE Workshop on Emerging Exploration www.eage.org

London

United Kingdom

28-30 Jun

First EAGE Conference on Guyana Basins www.eage.org

Georgetown

Guyana

May 2020

June 2020

August 2020 17-21 Aug

Geobaikal 2020 6th Scientific Conference www.eage.org

Irkutsk

Russia

20-21 Aug

First EAGE Workshop on EOR Development and Evolution in Latin America www.eage.org

Bogotá

Colombia

24-26 Aug

GeoUtrecht 2020

Utrecht

Netherlands

25-27 Aug

Second EAGE Marine Acquisition Workshop www.eage.org

Oslo

Norway

30 Aug 3 Sep

Near Surface Geoscience Conference & Exhibition 2020 www.eage.org

Belgrade

Serbia

September 2020 7‑9 Sep

EAGE/AAPG Digital Geoscience Asia Pacific Conference & Exhibition www.eage.org

Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia

7‑11 Sep

Geomodel 2020 www.eage.org

Gelendzhik

Russia

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