First Break May 2021 - Global Exploration Hotspots

VO L U M E 3 9 I I S S U E 5 I M AY 2 0 21

SPECIAL TOPIC

Global Exploration Hotspots EAGE NEWS Programme for Annual is confirmed TECHNICAL ARTICLE Walkaway VSP in ultra shallow water, offshore UAE CROSSTALK The UK — A transition like no other

2020 NVG DAZ fast-track

NORTHERN VIKING GRABEN DAZ SURVEY De-risk near-field exploration with enhanced data New east-west acquisition is being combined with a full reprocessing of the underlying NVG north-south data to generate a Dual-Azimuth volume.

Learn more on our website, or contact us to discuss our planned east-west acquisition for 2021.

datalibrary.scan@cgg.com

cgg.com/nvg SEE THINGS DIFFERENTLY

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) • Satinder Chopra, SamiGeo (satinder.chopra@samigeo.com) • Anthony Day, PGS (anthony.day@pgs.com) • Peter Dromgoole, Retired Geophysicist (peterdromgoole@gmail.com) • Rutger Gras, Consultant (r.gras@gridadvice.nl) • Hamidreza Hamdi, University of Calgary (hhamdi@ucalgary.ca) • 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) • Angelika-Maria Wulff, Kuwait Oil Company (AWulff@kockw.com) EAGE EDITOR EMERITUS Andrew McBarnet (andrew@andrewmcbarnet.com)

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Global exploration hotspots — where are explorers prioritising?

Editorial Contents 3

EAGE News

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Personal Record Interview

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Crosstalk

MEDIA PRODUCTION Saskia Nota (firstbreakproduction@eage.org)

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Industry News

PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Ivana Geurts (firstbreakproduction@eage.org)

Technical Articles

ADVERTISING INQUIRIES corporaterelations@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 AMERICAS SAS Calle 93 # 18-28 Oficina 704 Bogota, 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) FIRST BREAK ON THE WEB www.firstbreak.org ISSN 0263-5046 (print) / ISSN 1365-2397 (online)

31 Walkaway VSP in ultra-shallow water images deep Paleozoic targets, offshore UAE Rafael Guerra, Israa Salim, Manish Lal Khaitan, Angelos Mavromatidis and Thomas Leythaeuser 37

Adaptive de-blending of dithered simultaneous sources Arash JafarGandomi, Sebastian Holland and Sergio Grion

Special Topic: Global Exploration Hotspots

46 Emerging plays and alternative petroleum systems in Mozambique revealed by multi-disiplinary data integration

Rachael Harrison, Max Norman, Javier Martin and Nick Rudd 55

Choose your spot and make it hot. How ideas turn into hotspots Neil Hodgson, Karyna Rodriguez and Julia Davies

63 The Kwanza-Campos conjugate pair: mirror twins? Revisiting and exploring new frontiers

Matthew Plummer and Jeff Tilton 71

Global exploration hotspots — where are explorers prioritizing?

Tiziana Luzzi

77 Multi-purpose high-resolution seismic acquisition: the deep-sea mining case Adriana Citlali Ramírez, Fredrik Andersson, Bent Kjølhamar and James Wallace 85 Global E&P host spots in the shadow of 5+ years of downturn, covid and the maths of energy transition

Mike Lakin

Feature: WhatsUp!

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Standardization in geoscience – long overdue or a killer of creativity?

Peter Rowbotham

94 Calendar cover: Depth slice through a high-definition 65 Hz time-lag FWI velocity model revealing fluid contacts in a Barents Sea reservoir. The outline of the dark blue area (low velocity) in the centre indicates the gas-oil contact. The black polygon is the oil-water contact from the NPD database and the yellow dot indicates the location of a well on the very edge of the gas-oil contact. (image courtesy of CGG)

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European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers

Board 2020-2021

Everhard Muijzert President

Dirk Orlowsky Vi c e-President

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

Pascal Breton Secretary-Treasurer

Oil & Gas Geoscience Division

Caroline Le Turdu Membership and Cooperation Officer

Michael Peter Suess Chair; TPC Lucy Slater Vice-Chair Caroline Jane Lowrey Immediate Past Chair; TPC Erica Angerer Member Wiebke Athmer Member Juliane Heiland TPC Tijmen-Jan Moser Editor-in-chief Geophysical Prospecting 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

Colin MacBeth Education Officer

Ingrid Magnus Publications Officer

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.

Companies can subscribe to First Break via an institutional subscription.

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

Alireza Malehmir Chair Near Surface 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.

Michael Peter Suess Chair Oil & Gas Geoscience Division

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 © 2021 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.

PAPER The publisher’s policy is to use acid-free permanent paper (TCF), to the draft standard ISO/DIS/9706, made from sustainable ­forests using chlorine-free pulp (Nordic-Swan standard).

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HIGHLIGHTS

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Conversation with Basin Research prize winner

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Make your vote count

Permanent reservoir monitoring journey continues

EAGE confirms programme for 82nd Annual Conference & Exhibition 2021 in Amsterdam The 82nd EAGE Annual Conference & Exhibition plans to deliver a hybrid (in-person and online) event from 18–21 October 2021. Here’s what you can expect.

Meeting on the exhibition floor.

The EAGE Annual 2021 aims to provide the ideal opportunity for the geoscience and engineering community in industry and academia to re-engage after a very challenging year. EAGE will once again commit to holding the biggest and most important multi-disciplinary event of its kind in the world.

We are of course aware that the Covid19 pandemic may still be problematic this coming October, but are hopeful that travel and meeting restrictions will have been significantly lifted by mid-October as a

result of vaccination programes underway in countries around the world.

The EAGE Annual has always been about bringing the industry together, and many people tell us how much they have missed live events, not just for the faceto-face conversations, but also for those chance meetings in the coffee queue or waiting for the tram or a taxi. Even so, EAGE’s priority is to get back to doing business in a way that keeps everyone safe.

We cannot expect this year’s EAGE Annual 2021 in Amsterdam to be on the same scale as the 2019 event we hosted in London. However, we believe that our incomparable comprehensive technical programme, exhibition, forums, workshops, community meetings, student schedule, etc will as ever attract the attendance of EAGE’s core audience as well as many other participants, all anxious for technology updates and professional interaction after the Covid-19 hiatus.

The event will be held in a hybrid format, meaning that it will combine an in-person event with online components.

Participants will be able to choose to participate either in person or virtually, while speakers will be able to present their FIRST

works in person at the venue or submit a pre-recorded presentation that will be streamed during the session(s).

Hybrid participation - A chance to catch up Participants attending the event in person will benefit mostly from the high level of interaction at Amsterdam’s largest conference centre, RAI Amsterdam, numerous networking opportunities, and social programme. You get the chance to chat in person to the speakers, chairpersons and other attendees that have an expertise and interest in the same areas as you. Meet them in the Technical Programme rooms, next to the coffee corner, at lunch, or simply by chance in the hallways.

Meanwhile at the Exhibition you can walk around our exhibitors’ stands, catch up on their latest discoveries, products, and services, make new connections and learn the most up to date information in the geoscience and engineering field. And don’t forget that outside of conference hours, you can explore the beautiful city of Amsterdam.

As part of part of the hybrid registration, delegates will have access to our BREAK

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EAGE NEWS

virtual event platform where they can benefit from all other aspects of attending the event, mentioned below.

Online participation Opportunity for a virtual experience Participants unable to travel to the event in person will be able to attend the event virtually and still experience most of the proceedings, watch engaging new

content, grow their network and make new professional contacts via our virtual platform.

Remote participants will be able to view the pre-recorded presentations, most live Technical Programme sessions as well as plenary sessions such as the Opening Session and Forum Sessions, where they can submit written questions in the discussion portal. During the week it will be possible to attend virtual social events,

visit the Virtual Exhibition and connect with the exhibitors and event sponsors, all while benefiting from online interaction tools such as networking rooms and easy private socialising.

For more information on the EAGE Annual Conference & Exhibition 2021, make sure to visit eageannual2021.org.

Registration is open and right now you can benefit from the discounted Early Bird fee, so don’t miss out.

Four plenary forums at 2021 Annual will discuss challenges ahead for geoscience and engineering The forum sessions covering hot topics for the energy industry have always been a popular feature at EAGE Annual Meetings. This year we intend to build on their success.

We are introducing a series of related one-hour plenary sessions over the four days of the Annual Conference so that they will be accessible to as many people as possible who are attending the event in-person. The sessions will also be available live online.

This year’s forums will be interactive.

What we are offering is a platform of international energy industry leaders and analysts discussing the main issues, challenges and opportunities facing the geoscience and engineering community in this time of great uncertainty. It should provide the most authoritative perspective available on how the meeting of tomorrow’s energy needs will evolve. Each day will cover a different topic in a logical sequence from 4

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an overview of world energy trends to the education and careers of the next generation of geoscience and engineering professionals. To add spontaneity, questions from the audience and those participating online will be encouraged.

The line-up of panellists, all distinguished in their field, will be announced shortly. The themes we intend to cover are as follows.

Will great expectations be realized?

Focus of the first forum will be on global energy transition issues and the pace of change in the balance of supply and demand for traditional fossil fuels and renewables. Just some of the questions arising include: What impact has Covid-19 pandemic had on transition momentum? How quickly can we reduce our dependence on oil and gas? What role will decarbonization initiatives play?

Should oil and gas companies be taking the lead?

Oil company E&P strategies In whatever way the energy sector develops, the oil and gas industry seems destined to be front and centre for decades to come. The second forum will be the chance to find out how IOCs and NOCs view the future of exploration in the transition era, and what measures are required to keep operations sustainable 2021

(e.g., enhanced recovery measures, digitalization, multi-client projects, revaluation of legacy data, etc). The changing commercial and technology landscape for seismic service and equipment suppliers will be a major focus.

Meeting decarbonization goals The third forum will review how geoscientists and engineers can support decarbonization and renewable initiatives.

This starts with the oil and gas industry itself where cleaner, safer and more environmentally friendly E&P is a major priority. Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) is another obvious application for industry expertise. But the panel of specialists can be expected to broaden the range of discussion to consider many other energy sources (geothermal, wind turbines, solar, tidal, hydrogen, nuclear, biomass, etc) and their relevance to geoscience and engineering in the future.

Career and education challenge The forum series will conclude with a session on how the changing energy landscape will affect education, training, qualifications, and career structures of geoscientists and engineers. This is an increasingly urgent issue for both academia and an energy industry structure undergoing rapid change.

NO MORE SEPARATION ANXIETY

DUG DEBLEND

Blended surveys provide a number of operational and technical advantages. In the OBN example pictured above, three triplesource vessels were firing within 15 km of each other. Such overlapping shots must first be separated to permit subsequent processing. DUG Deblend is our inversion-based solution which can reconstruct shots as if they had been acquired separately.

It generalises to a wide range of scenarios and can also simultaneously deblend seismic interference, which is simply an unintended form of blended acquisition. With DUG Deblend, there is no more separation anxiety.

(Data courtesy of AGS and TGS)

EAGE NEWS

Basin Research early career award winner prizes job in oil and gas business It is quite a feat to get your research published, especially as a recent graduate. The annual Basin Research Early Career Award is awarded to acknowledge the work of up and coming researchers. Dr Bonita J. Barrett, the main author of the paper Quantitative analysis of a footwall-scarp degradation complex and syn-rift stratigraphic architecture, Exmouth Plateau, NW Shelf, offshore Australia (available open access via EarthDoc) was selected as the winner of the 2020 award. We spoke to Bonita who is currently a senior geologist at Equinor. stratigraphy in rift basins, using different approaches to interpret the controls acting on a given basin. The subsurface basin of focus in the paper is analogous in a number of ways to my field area, onshore Gulf of Corinth, Greece. A further motivation was that the available subsurface data was high quality and open access through Geoscience Australia.

Dr Bonita J. Barrett.

Can you share what your research was about?

Our paper documents the tectono-stratigraphic evolution of the outboard (Thebe) fault block of the northern Carnarvon basin, NW Shelf, Australia. It is one of few studies to undertake an integrated assessment of syn-rift footwall degradation and hangingwall-fill. In particular, our approach to locate through-going footwall sediment entry points is novel. We do this by balancing the eroded volumes from the footwall crest and the deposited volumes in hangingwall fans. We also study the complex stratigraphic architecture in the hangingwall-fill and unravel interactions between different depositional systems, finding contributions from footwall-, hangingwall- and axial-derived sediment sources.

Your research was part of a larger body of PhD research.

How does this particular study fit within your overall research?

My contribution forms the subsurface component of my PhD that I undertook at the University of Leeds. I also carried out numerical modelling and field-based studies, which also focused on sequence 6

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You’re currently working at Equinor, how does your earlier PhD research relate to your day-to-day work?

I was employed by research and technology in Equinor towards the end of 2019. As part of the two-year graduate programme, I have been rotating between teams to experience different parts of the business within the geoscience discipline, including sedimentology, technology development and, now, geohazards and site survey.

I’ve also been fortunate to contribute to carbon storage research and work with the internal university to develop a virtual field course. As such, my specific PhD research theme has had little bearing on my day-to-day work so far, but I am regularly applying skills that I learned, such as geological interpretation across scales and integration of different datasets.

What are the challenges of transferring from the academic to industry world?

I was fortunate to be offered a position in industry before my final year of my PhD, so I had some time to prepare myself.

The transition was perhaps made simpler by my employment in Equinor’s large research unit, which has high cross-over and collaboration with academia. I always wanted to pursue an industry career and be part of shaping the energy future, and had this in mind throughout my studies. I undertook internships to gain experience 2021

and shaped my PhD research to address applied, industry problems. I’ve also been greatly supported in my new role by my leaders and colleagues, which has certainly made the transition easier.

In the current day and age, students may be more hesitant to pursue a career in geosciences. What would you say to those contemplating such a degree?

Times are changing fast, public scrutiny is high and the job market is volatile, so I empathize with those making their degree decisions. However, I think there has never been a more exciting time to join the energy industry and be part of its transformation. The role of a geoscientist is broadening, we are involved in oil and gas, but our understanding of earth systems and forensic skill sets are in increasing demand in other areas too. I would suggest being agile and ready to adapt – that means being broad in skills, open-minded in approach, and establishing a strong network to help guide you.

Basin Research Volume 33 . Number 2 . April 2021 . http://www.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/bre

Published in conjunction with the European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers and the International Association of Sedimentologists

Editors: Atle Rotevatn (University of Bergen) Kerry Gallagher (University of Rennes) Peter Burgess (University of Liverpool) Cari Johnson (University of Utah) Craig Magee (University of Leeds) Nadine McQuarrie (University of Pittsburgh)

Basin Research, issue April 2021.

EAGE NEWS

EAGE Learning Geoscience platform now includes more than 100 E-Lectures If you haven’t done so already, take a look at our E-Lectures programme. There are over 100 high quality E-Lectures currently available on our Learning Geoscience platform (www.LearningGeoscience. org). They are based on some of the best technical programme deliveries at EAGE conferences and represent a huge learning resource for both young and experienced professionals There is something for everyone here with E-Lectures categorized into topics such as: Seismic Acquisition, Seismic Processing, Surface Imaging, Reservoir Characterization, Integrated Geophysics, Exploration, Stratigraphy, Geological Modelling, Structural Geology, Geomechanics, Rock Physics, Near Surface, Engineering, Training & Development, and Data Science.

The E-Lectures themselves are short videos lasting between 15 to 30 minutes and easy to access from everywhere, at any time.

New presentations are uploaded regularly and offer access to learning and update on the most interesting developments in geoscience and engineering.

Best of all, EAGE E-Lectures are free of charge for all. By becoming an EAGE member you not only support educational initiatives like this, but can also attend free of charge the Distinguished Lecturer Programme (DLP) and E-Lecture webinars - high quality live lectures covering the latest developments in geoscience and engineering. The papers on which the E-Lectures and Distinguished Lecturer Programme deliveries are based are stored in EAGE’s EarthDoc, where you

will be able to find over 70,000 extended abstracts, technical and journal articles.

Scan this code to view EAGE E-Lectures.

Scan this code to learn more about EAGE membership.

EAGE Online Education Calendar START AT ANY TIME

VELOCITIES, IMAGING, AND WAVEFORM INVERSION - THE EVOLUTION OF CHARACTERIZING THE EARTH’S SUBSURFACE, BY I. F. JONES (ONLINE EET)

SELF PACED COURSE

6 CHAPTERS OF 1 HR

3-4 MAY

NEAR-SURFACE GEOSCIENCE, BY A. LAAKE

SHORT COURSE

2 SESSIONS OF 4 HRS

4-7 MAY

3D PRINTING AS AN EMERGING TECHNOLOGY IN GEOSCIENCES,

BY F. HASIUK AND S. ISHUTOV

SHORT COURSE

4 SESSIONS OF 4 HRS

11 MAY

NEAR-FIELD MEASUREMENTS VERSUS FAR-FIELD ESTIMATIONS OF AIR GUN ARRAY SOUND PRESSURE LEVELS, BY P. FONTANA

WEBINAR

1 SESSION OF 1 HR

12-13 MAY

SEISMIC ACQUISITION PROJECT ESSENTIALS: FROM CONCEPT TO COMPLETION AND BEYOND, BY J. DE BRUIN

SHORT COURSE

2 SESSIONS OF 4 HRS

17-20 MAY

MITIGATING BIAS, BLINDNESS AND ILLUSION IN E&P DECISION MAKING,

BY M. BOND

SHORT COURSE

4 SESSIONS OF 4 HRS

17 MAY 17 JUN

DEVELOPING DEEP LEARNING APPLICATIONS FOR THE OILFIELD: FROM THEORY TO REAL WORLD PROJECTS, BY B. MONTARON

EXTENSIVE COURSE*

5 SESSIONS OF 1 HR

24 MAY

EXPLORATION DISCOVERIES AND FUTURE TRENDS, BY A. LATHAM

WEBINAR

1 SESSION OF 1 HR

26 MAY

FACIES PROBABILITIES: SEISMIC INVERSION COMING OF AGE,

BY P. CONNOLLY

WEBINAR

1 SESSION OF 1 HR

1-4 JUN

APPLIED OILFIELD GEOMECHANICS, BY J. HERWANGER

SHORT COURSE

4 SESSIONS OF 4 HRS

21 JUN 21 JUL

INTRODUCTION TO MACHINE LEARNING FOR GEOPHYSICAL APPLICATIONS,

BY J. MONDT

EXTENSIVE COURSE*

4 SESSIONS OF 1-2 HRS

* EXTENSIVE SELF PACED MATERIALS AND INTERACTIVE SESSIONS WITH THE INSTRUCTOR: CHECK SCHEDULE OF EACH COURSE FOR DATES AND TIMES OF LIVE SESSIONS FOR MORE INFORMATION AND REGISTRATION PLEASE VISIT WWW.EAGE.ORG AND WWW.LEARNINGGEOSCIENCE.ORG.

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EAGE NEWS

First workshop on exploration off East Canada coming in November

Hebron platform under tow to location in the Jeanne d’Arc Basin, offshore Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada (photo courtesy of ExxonMobil Canada).

EAGE is to hold its First Workshop on East Canada Offshore Exploration 15-17 November 2021 in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador.

The recent successes in bid auctions in the offshore and deep offshore Newfoundland and Labrador have renewed interest in the province and East Canada offshore potential in general. The area poses various geological and operational

challenges. These will be addressed during the workshop aimed at discussing an effective collaboration between stakeholders, including Canadian federal and provincial authorities, IOCs, independent operators, geological, geophysical and drilling service companies as well as academia.

We are confident that the latest advances in geological and geophysical sciences, as well as drilling and specific

HSE and operational requirements in a difficult environment, will be major themes of the workshop. The technical programme offers an opportunity to share and transfer knowledge on potential and proven plays, petroleum systems, geodynamic context of the North Atlantic (West and East) and Labrador Sea as well as economic conditions under which development projects can be launched in such environments. It also provides a chance to exchange views with industry players on regional perspectives including East Canada offshore (Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nunavut), also Greenland and the Northeast Atlantic.

We are inviting contributions to this workshop via an invitation to submit extended abstracts by the deadline of 15 June 2021. We thank our sponsors of this event, TGS and PGS. Follow this link for more information: https://eage. eventsair.com/east-canada-offshore/.

Entries open for Czechsponsored best degree thesis competition Local Chapter Czech Republic will once again participate in this year’s competition for the best Bachelor’s and Master’s degree thesis in theoretical and applied geophysics/seismology.

Graduates of Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes from Czech, Slovak, Austrian, Hungarian, German and Polish universities are eligible to enter.

To participate, applicants must present a thesis defended between 5 October 2020 and 4 October 2021 in either English, Czech or Slovak.

This will be the ninth edition of the contest, which is sponsored by service companies Seismik and G Impuls.

The organizers aim at encouraging the application of scientific knowledge to

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real problems and innovation in the field of theoretical or applied geophysics, particularly seismology.

Submissions will be assessed by an expert commission composed of representatives from the Local Chapter, the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics and the Faculty of Science at Charles University. The winners will be awarded a cash prize of CZV10,000 (for the Masters thesis) and CZK5000 (for the Bachelor’s thesis) in addition to a course of their choice in the new EAGE Learning Geoscience platform - including interactive online short courses, extensive online courses and self-paced courses. EAGE is proud to support this initiative and the award ceremony that

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will take place in December. Join the EAGE Local Chapter Czech Republic LinkedIn group (https://www.linkedin. com/groups/8837006/) for more information about the contest and apply before 15 October 2021.

Award selection in 2020.

EAGE NEWS

Make your vote count in the annual Board member election The annual EAGE Board elections are due to take place, with voting online beginning in May 2021.

The Board is responsible for developing appropriate policies to achieve the objectives of EAGE in the interests of its

members. We therefore invite all members to participate in the upcoming ballot, as this is an important opportunity for you to have a say in how the Association is run on your behalf.

This year you can vote for candidates in the positions of Vice President, Publication Officer and Vice-chair O&G Geoscience Division, to be filled from July 2021. On the EAGE website you will find short biographies and motivation words from all the candidates to help with your voting decisions.

A personalized invitation will be sent directly to your email with instructions on

how to vote in the coming days. We are looking forward to having your vote in this year’s ballot.

Data preconditioning method is subject of latest London LC virtual meeting London Chapter’s evening talk in March was delivered online by Arash JafarGandomi of Shearwater GeoServices. The topic was Vertical Image Projection, an effective data preconditioning to account for wavelet rotation in seismic inversion JafarGandomi described the influence of migration on seismic wavelet shape and its effect on impedance inversion. He provided an overview of the existing approaches from the literature on tackling this issue and pointed to their applicability or shortcomings.

A waveform distortion depends on ray incidence angle and on the structural dip, so the strongest impact on the wavelet is in the areas with steep dips, as on the flanks of anticlines or at sub-vertical faults. The noise in the data may also have various dip and, hence, will contribute to the error.

The key idea of the Vertical Image Projection process is to account for

the dip of the events and to project their corresponding wavelets as if

they were observed as vertical in the inversion domain. This is achieved by manipulation of the dip information in the wavenumber domain.

After the correction, the quantitative interpretation or impedance inversion can be done as usual, employing conventional inversion algorithms that assume the 1D vertical trace with the wavelets normal to the locally flat geology.

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The resulting impedance becomes much closer to the expected values and much less affected by the cross-cutting noise. This approach is simple and efficient and requires minimum change to existing workflows. There is also no need to explicitly provide dip information. It can be applied either on stacked data or pre-stack offset (or angle) volumes. JafarGandomi demonstrated the inversion uplift on a synthetic BP2007 dataset and on the real deep-water marine example.

The presentation was followed by the Q&A session and interactive online communication between the speaker and the audience.

EAGE Local Chapter London acknowledges Artem Kashubin of PetroTrace, Bingmu Xiao of CGG, Lok Lee of Schlumberger, Celina Giersz of Stryde, Ali Karagul of Total, Azza Salem of TGS and, of course, Arash JafarGandomi of Shearwater for arranging this event.

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Workshop demonstrates that reservoir monitoring has a promising journey ahead

WORKSHOP

REPORT

The Third Practical Reservoir Monitoring workshop was held on 1-2 March as part of the First EAGE Geophysical Monitoring Conference and Exhibition (EAGE GeoTech 2021).

This is the report from technical committee member Mark Thompson (Equinor).

This year’s online event, spread over two European afternoons, enabled participation from across the globe with representatives from operators, vendors, and academia. The workshop was kicked off with two keynote speeches. Monica Calvert (Total) demonstrated the importance of understanding the matrix and fluid properties of the reservoir, with a discussion highlighting the impact of geomechanical effects exhibited on the chalk fields of Hafdan and Tyra in

4D feasibility studies should incorporate the impact of subsurface illumination on the seismic image caused by the choice of acquisition strategy, overburden, and surface obstructions. He described a workflow that brought together previously separate domains to understand how the reservoir will respond to production, what changes can be expected in the seismic response, and what level of acquisition effort must be deployed to adequately capture the changes.

Johan Castberg field in the Barents Sea (image courtesy of Equinor).

Denmark. Jon Brain (Shell) managed to capture 20 years of 4D at Shell in 30 minutes succinctly describing 4D as a ‘specialism for the generalist’. This specialism requires a broad understanding of geophysics (acquisition, processing, interpretation) as well as an understanding of reservoir engineering, geomechanics, geochemistry, petrophysics, and geology.

He also described his philosophy of ‘know your data, know your signal, integrate, visualize, and understand your uncertainty’.

He then tied into the concept of the ‘4D Dark Space’, a situation where the lack of a 4D signal needs to be equally understood. The next session of the workshop examined the approaches to planning with the two presentations. The first by Claudio Leone (Schlumberger) highlighted that 10

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Angus Styles (Ion) then described how the methods to achieve the geometric repeatability specifications required for 4D seismic have been applied to more standard 3D surveys. With increasing focus on improving the efficiency of 3D seismic, he showed how 4D swath matching techniques led to improvements in 3D surveys.

The next session focused on improved efficiencies through standardization, simplification, and the use of cloud services. Using ocean-bottom node (OBN) examples from deep water Nigeria, Osahon Osabuohien (Schlumberger) showed how the emphasis has shifted towards delivering time-lapse seismic images as soon as possible after the acquisition of a new monitor survey. This has required the development of robust, accurate and 2021

semi-automated processing workflows.

The experience from several OBN 4D projects has enabled the creation of a generic OBN processing template that can be adapted to the requirements of any given dataset, correcting most sources of non-repeatability. Additionally, the use of improved algorithms has reduced the processing complexity when combined with cloud computing, that can reduce processing turnaround times by up to 75%.

Returning to cloud and digitalization, Emin Sadikhov (Equinor) reviewed how this has enabled more productive and efficient seismic acquisition for permanent reservoir monitoring (PRM). Standardized and automated processes for data flow from the seismic source vessel and PRM system, offshore, deliver data into the cloud in near real-time for quality control. In the final session of the day on the use of PRM, Per Gunnar Folstad (ConocoPhillips) showed that, since installation of PRM in 2010 at Ekofisk, 19 seismic surveys have been acquired, with NRMS values below 5% and close to 99% of the sensor stations working with plans to continue acquisition of one to two new surveys per year. The PRM is used on a regular basis, for overburden monitoring, well path optimization and containment assurance to reservoir waterfront mapping, seismic PLTs and well target identifications. PRM has delivered significant value by influencing new wells (~70) and a new drilling template. More recently 4D AVA analysis has been under investigation and may become a valuable tool for classification of the 4D signals.

Cedric Fayemendy (Equinor) and Hilde Nakstad (ASN) explained that the Johan Sverdrup field in the North Sea is the first oil field that has installed a PRM system prior to start of production. The PRM system was installed and commissioned in parallel with the installation and commissioning of the topside facilities. The first

EAGE NEWS

survey was completed immediately prior to first oil from Johan Sverdrup field.

Severine Pannetier Lescoffit (Equinor) chronicled the evolution of reservoir monitoring from pilot studies in the early 1990s to several PRM installations on the Norwegian Continental Shelf today. She highlighted future technical and business challenges in monitoring mature fields, gas fields, and smaller tie-ins to existing infrastructure while examining the themes of high value, always safe and low carbon.

The second day began with Maria Clara Costa (Equinor) who presented a broader view of reservoir management with a focus on increased oil recovery.

She described how early average estimates of the recovery factor on the NCS in the 1980s was approximately 30% but have risen today to approximately 50% and that ambitions for the future are over 60%.

Shauna Oppert (Chevron) continued the day with two case studies that examined how a multi-disciplinary approach was necessary to understand and quantify the 4D seismic interpretations. The first involved compaction-related saturation changes where integrated work using the reservoir flow simulation model, pressure transient analysis, and geomechanical modelling was used to understand the 4D seismic observations. A further example used 2D modelling of complex pressure and saturation effects to quantify changes and aid in assisted history-matching of the field.

Sarah Harrington (Schlumberger) followed up with a history-matching case study from Gannet East. Flow simulation models were used with a rock physics model to create synthetic seismic data (Sim2Seis) to match the 4D baseline and two available monitor seismic surveys.

After two iterations of Sim2Seis modelling and reservoir model updates, a much-improved seismic match was obtained, resulting in a reservoir model that is a more reliable reservoir monitoring tool and is being used to plan an infill well.

In the final presentation Dhananjay Kumar (BP) showed how 4D seismic has been used successfully in reservoir monitoring at the Atlantis field in the Gulf of Mexico. He described how 4D data have been used quantitively to update the reservoir model by a joint inversion of the 4D seismic and the production data

through 4D assisted history matching.

This is the result of not just one reservoir model but 1000s of models that capture the parameter space and show the uncertainties that are present in the reservoir model where quick analysis of ensembles was used to understand the uncertainties in the reservoir model.

The next session of the day investigated alternative approaches to monitoring that moved beyond the norm. Zoya Zarifi (Equinor) discussed developing plans to monitor the Northern Lights carbon capture storage site offshore Norway. The plans call for the site to be monitored by passive seismic, prior and during the lifetime of injection to make sure carbon injection will not impose any seismic risk.

Data from several offshore PRM systems showed that a good azimuthal coverage of stations can have a large impact on accuracy of location and magnitude of event. Current indications are that a seismic network consisting of pre-existing PRM systems combined with a limited number of broadband seismometers from the Norwegian National Seismic Network (plus new offshore stations to be installed) could provide a cost-effective setting for monitoring.

Eduardo Barros (TNO) (showed how the use of auto-encoder neural networks could be used for planning and managing operations of subsurface reservoir assets for conforming carbon storage. He introduced the use of a model-based quantitative workflow to objectively assess the usefulness of monitoring for conformance verification.

He investigated the use of a semi-supervised anomaly detection approach based on auto-encoder neural networks, trained on simulated time-lapse seismic data, as an alternative to other supervised classification approaches explored so far.

Hugo Ruiz (OCTIO) described the use of seabed gravimetry and subsidence monitoring to monitor the Snøhvit gas field. Though in use for two decades, recent improvements in survey procedures and instrumentation have led to significantly better sensitivity to both gravity changes and subsidence. In the final session on ‘Pushing the Envelope’, Gustavo Corte (Heriot-Watt University) discussed employment of a deep neural network to invert 4D seismic amplitude maps to the simultaneous changes in FIRST

pressure, water and gas saturations. In a situation where there was insufficient data measured at the wells for training neural networks, the network was trained on synthetic data. Understanding the impact of including physics-based constraints on the reservoir property distribution and using the results of a reservoir simulation model to populate the training datasets were demonstrated and highlighted the potential of deep neural networks for 4D seismic inversion, in a situation where no appropriate measured data is present.

Shauna Oppert (Chevron) introduced the SEAM Life of Field project, a collaboration between the SEG and the Society of Petroleum Engineers to create a timelapse model that incorporates complex production simulations for a carbonate reservoir.

Martin Landrø (Norwegian University of Science & Technology - NTNU) ended the workshop with a presentation of the recently created Centre for Geophysical Forecasting (CGF) at NTNU. The centre is a joint enterprise funded by the Norwegian Research Council (NRC), industrial partners and NTNU and aims to create the world-leading research and innovation centre exploiting existing geophysical expertise. The centre aims to develop new and improved methods for monitoring CO2 storage, sustainable and environmentally responsible oil and gas production, landslides and avalanches, sudden hazardous events along roads and railways and new methods for monitoring and mapping life and geophysical events at sea and near the seabed.

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Lessons learnt by student chapters during the pandemic Helping geoscience students help themselves, both at the university and international level. That, in a nutshell, is the driving idea behind EAGE Student Chapters. With meeting restrictions in place for over a year now and travel movements limited, this is a challenge to our students and their faculty advisors. We’ve reached out to some of them to learn more about how they are getting on.

It was not necessarily easy, says Florencia Balestrini, president of the EAGE Student Chapter at Delft University of Technology, referring to activities in 2020. ‘We usually start the year with a range of different events’. A signature feature at the Dutch chapter is the Thursday Talk, an informal session where PhD students, post-docs and staff are invited to talk about their research.

‘We moved these online,’ Balestrini says, ‘and they quickly became central to the academic interaction at the university. We now also involve undergraduate students.

Even after a year the talks are still well received’.

the pandemic on the energy industry made many students anxious about their future, according to UTP student chapter president Danial Asmady. ‘We started to organize regular monthly meetings online on a variety of topics to keep people motivated and connected.’

In cooperation with other student chapters, the group developed a series of online meetings, including meetings on scientific writing and the millennial energy challenge, many of these initiatives supported by the academic staff. Dr Abdul Halim Abdul Latiff, UTP faculty advisor, explains: ‘The activities set up by our students comple-

Our student chapters organized a range of different events in the past year.

The organization of the many activities

by Balestrini and the others during the last year, both academically and socially, has really helped with adding a sense of community. ‘Even for student chapters with a well-established history, this last year has posed a new challenge for students to wrap their heads around,’ says faculty advisor Prof Kees Wapenaar. The student organization was originally set up by MSc students in the 1990s as the Delft Organization of Geophysics Students (DOGS).

At Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) in Malaysia, chapter members also saw a need to move quickly towards online meetings. Students had difficulties adapting to the sudden change and the impact of 12

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ment the curriculum offered at the faculty.

We were therefore able to support their efforts with talks by our staff members and industry experts we know.’

UTP saw the opportunity to develop new ways of operating. ‘In 2021, we’re already way more organized,’ says Asmady.

‘Previously our groups had worked in isolation, now there’s much more interaction.’

The chapter recently released some special podcasts including ‘Study Abroad: Get to Know Malaysian Student Culture’, created in partnership with Himpunan Mahasiswa Geofisika Indonesia (HMGI).

Our student chapter in Malaysia is not the only one looking beyond borders. Some have advanced plans to cooperate with 2021

students overseas. At the Free University of Berlin, student chapter president Marlene Tielmann describes its initiative. ‘At the start of the year, preparations were in full swing to organize our joint field camp with the Uppsala University Student Chapter.

Fortunately, with some flexible planning, the field work was able to take place later than planned. It required a lot of extra work to ensure safety - all participants had to get tested. In the end, it was a great experience for both student chapters.’

Changing pandemic guidelines dictated a flexible approach to the planning of all events, according to Tielmann. ‘We were able to run a number of one-day excursions with flexible dates in line with the current regulations. Many of our recurring activities, such as our research talks, were all moved online.’

For some, starting a chapter may be a daunting prospect. However, they will soon realize they are not alone - fellow students and staff are usually very supportive and willing to contribute to the activities. ‘Student chapters are a key platform for talent development,’ states Dr Latiff. ‘As such, I’m highly motivated to drive students to achieving more in the geoscience field.’

Support from the faculty is important, but student-led initiatives are an equally important driver of a successful organization. At Delft, a grassroots up approach is used to stimulate students. Prof Wapenaar says, ‘My role is mainly supportive, the group is self-organized with me available for support when needed.’

Starting and keeping a chapter going should be a communal and shared effort.

‘Make sure to surround yourself with students keen to help, and let others at your department know what you’re up to. It really helps,’ Balestrini advises.

‘We recommend our chapter members get involved in EAGE’s activities - there are plenty on the EAGE website,’ says Tielmann. ‘Also dare to implement your own

EAGE NEWS

ideas, you will see this can result in great opportunities!’ Through their activities, students from her chapter in Berlin have been able to meet many new individuals - both at their university and within the wider community.

A can-do mentality, inclusiveness and perseverance are also cornerstones for a successful chapter are what the student chapter at UTP has found. ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day, a successful student chapter requires continued effort.

You need to keep everyone updated and involved,’ says Asmady. ‘That being said, make sure to have fun. Students chapters provide a place of shared understanding

Still time to submit abstracts for GET2021

and community, so don’t stress out too much.’

So, shared effort, frequent activities and a positive attitude make all the difference in running a successful EAGE student chapter. Whether it is in-person or online - there are many opportunities for students to explore.

We want to remind everyone that EAGE’s second edition of its highly rated Geoscience & Engineering in Energy Transition Conference takes place in Strasbourg, France on 23-25 November 2021. This year’s conference will feature topics such offshore wind energy, CCUS, geothermal energy, energy storage, integration, cross-uses, environment and sustainability, solutions and society.

GET2021 intends to continue to showcase the work on the established uses of the subsurface for the energy transition.

But it will also broaden the scope of the debate by looking at the role of the subsurface disciplines for other energy sources.

Additionally, following the ‘trademark’ conference approaches, the event will look at the synergies that can be crossed over from one industry or application to another. Last but not least, the meeting will reflect on the underlying associated societal aspects, including financing, governance and policies, as well as the overall environmental impact and sustainability of the solutions being proposed.

Geoscience and engineering professionals working in the energy industry, in research institutions and academia, and within public authorities and social stakeholders, are invited to join the debate by submitting an abstracts before 1 June or by attending in November whether in-person or online. For all the latest details on GET2021, please visit www.GET2021.org.

If you are interested in launching a chapter at your institution, make sure to go to EAGE.org/ students to see how you can get started.

Malaysian students start new chapter

First virtual meeting of University of Malaya Student Chapter.

It is only a couple of months or so since 15 aspiring geoscientists in Malaysia, a mixture of postgraduate and undergraduate students, founded the EAGE Student Chapter University of Malaya.

Already plenty of activities are planned in the coming weeks including a Technology Week, an Industrial Visit, and more. The aim, for the current year, is to gain extensive insights into oil and

gas exploration as well as innovation by accessing different articles, conferences, and lectures online. Furthermore, the chapter will allow students to engage and exchange ideas on geoscience and its digital applications worldwide. With the current pandemic, everything has gone online and can be easily accessed with the click of a mouse. Consequently, the chapter will undoubtedly become a prime resource the university’s geoscience students.

It will also provide a platform for encouraging students to challenge themselves by participating in conferences and projects with other universities worldwide. In other words, the current pandemic will not impede the student’s capability to expand their horizons.

EAGE Student Calendar 19 MAY

STUDENT WEBINAR: MANAGING A CAREER IN THE ENERGY TRANSITION,

BY SEAN MCQUAID

ONLINE

21 MAY

STUDENT WEBINAR: NOISE, BIAS AND GEOLOGY – HOW TO QUANTIFY UNCERTAINTIES FOR PROBABILISTIC SEISMIC INVERSION, BY PATRICK CONNOLLY

ONLINE

26 MAY

STUDENT E-SUMMIT: STUDENT CHAPTER COOPERATION

ONLINE

JUNE

LAURIE DAKE CHALLENGE 2021 FINAL ROUND

ONLINE

23 JUN

STUDENT WEBINAR: SEISMIC APPLICATIONS FOR MINING USING PASSIVE SOURCES, BY DEYAN DRAGANOV

ONLINE

18-21 OCT

82ND EAGE ANNUAL CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION (STUDENT ACTIVITIES)

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS AND ONLINE

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

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EAGE NEWS

Project turnaround workshop prompts lively debate and unanswered questions

WORKSHOP

REPORT

Fabio Mancini writes: EAGE’s First EAGE Workshop on Optimizing Project Turnaround Performance on 23-24 February was held virtually. The goal of the workshop, sponsored by PGS and Shearwater, was to investigate opportunities to significantly accelerate the turnaround time for the full data life cycle, from seismic acquisition to analysis at the interpreter’s workstation.

Given this broad context, presenters and attendees came from a wide cross-section of sectors and industries, including oil and gas operators, seismic contractors, tech startups, academia, and cloud providers, and held positions ranging from professor to chief geophysicist and executive.

The co-chairs, Fabio Mancini (Woodside Energy) and Tony Martin (PGS), opened the workshop and highlighted that, over the last few decades, technology evolution has improved data quality tremendously, yet most projects still take many months to complete, as data volumes grow, and geophysical algorithms become more complex. Presenters and attendees were asked to consider new technologies and approaches within the set of trade-offs that typically exist between time, cost, and quality; in particular, the question ‘Can we reduce time without sacrificing quality?’ was posed.

Accelerating data delivery is seen as an important goal by operators as it enables interpreters to spend more time analyzing the data ahead of critical decisions during resource evaluation, planning, and development. It also may enable seismic contractors to accommodate more projects, and therefore increase revenues.

During the workshop, four different aspects were discussed in four different sessions. Themes touched on the role of cloud, extended automation, use of machine learning, new processing algorithms, data compression, and task parallelisation.

Day one saw cloud providers along with companies currently taking advantage of their services, describe the wide range of opportunities that embracing cloud-based technologies may provide. Several speakers then demonstrated the potential for techniques from the fields of machine learning and data analytics to impact project turnaround, with examples from processing, imaging, inversion, and interpretation.

Day two began with two presentations suggesting that signal processing can potentially be bypassed altogether by relying on full-waveform inversion, although question marks remain over the associated computational burden at full bandwidth in 3D. Finally, practical approaches to cycle-time reduction, such as data compression and satellite-enabled on-board processing, were considered.

Observations Many examples were shown to significantly accelerate turnaround, which included data compression, machine learning, data analytics, data streaming, and advanced inversion coupled to access to large-scale compute.

While the integration of technologies and domain experts was shown to be key to success, there appeared to be no consistent approach, or silver bullet, to accelerate data delivery. Presentations not only showcased technological advancements aimed at

reducing the cycle time but also commented on what specific aspects within the chain most impact the timeline. This stimulated a healthy debate on how – and if – these should be addressed, for example seismic parameter testing.

There were prolonged periods of discussion, where it was agreed that accelerated turnaround is an added value and therefore quicker should not mean cheaper; we need to arrive at an economic model that allows technology and service companies to generate a return on investment in R&D. Given advances in compression algorithms, the session chairs and attendees asked the question ‘Are we over-precise as an industry? Should we promote data compression given the extremely limited differences (if any) relative to the original data?’. Compression enables faster data transfer and more efficient data storage, thereby reducing turnaround. More work may be required to prove full amplitude fidelity.

There is a wealth of opportunities in automation and machine learning but also several (not all technical) barriers, such as the dreaded ‘black box’ syndrome. F ​ ull automation in processing sequences, where reliable and common metrics are difficult to find,​is challenging; how can we build automated QCs that engender greater trust in a ‘hands-off’ world? Otherwise, are we simply moving effort from the execution phase to the QC phase? At the same time, many asked ‘Is hands-off really required?’.

It will be interesting to see what advances have been made by 2022, if, and when the workshop is re-convened.

The EAGE Student Fund supports student activities that help students bridge the gap between university and professional environments. This is only possible with the support from the EAGE community. If you want to support the next generation of geoscientists and engineers, go to donate.eagestudentfund.org or simply scan the QR code.

Many thanks for your donation in advance!

D O N AT E T O DAY !

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PERSONAL RECORD INTERVIEW

Vetle Vinje

Personal Record Interview

Lessons from a life in sport Vetle Vinje heads CGG’s Oslo-based seismic imaging research team, is a recipient of a number of professional awards and an occasional EAGE lecturer. He also rowed for Norway in two Olympics winning a silver medal (quadruple skulls) at the 1988 Games in Seoul.

What hooked you on geoscience?

From a very young age I was interested in all aspects of our earth and borrowed loads of books from the local library. But when I was 19 and needed to decide on a career, my first choice was to become a medical doctor or a chiropractor. My grades from college were not sufficient to get into the medical school in Oslo, and if I wanted to be a chiropractor, I needed to move to England. So instead, I opted for geology/geophysics at the university in Oslo. This also provided me with the optimal conditions to realize my goal of becoming the best rower in the world, which was my all-consuming focus for a period of 12 years.

Norwegian medal winners in Seoul xxxx (Vinje right of picture).

Your dad (Finn-Erik Vinje) is a well known linguistics professor and media academic in Norway. Was he disappointed when you opted for science?

Absolutely not. My dad has written more than 100 books on linguistics and was a national celebrity in Norway in the 70s and 80s. But despite this he had a great admiration for hard science and its achievements, so he was 100% supportive when I decided on geophysics.

What has given you most satisfaction so far in your professional career?

It gives me great satisfaction to work hard towards a goal for several years. I guess the three main achievements in my career as a geophysicist would be work on the wavefront construction method in the 90s, leading and growing pre-stack depth migration activity in CGG and the development and implementation of the company’s TopSeis seismic acquisition method.

Are there any lessons from sport for a career in geoscience?

To be successful in sport you need to work hard, and be dedicated and persistent over long periods of time with no instant gratification. You should never be content with past glory but always strive for improvement. Another lesson is that no matter how talented and hard-working you are, you will never succeed alone. Olympic medals are not a coincidence. They grow out of a culture and traditions as is the case with Norwegian rowing which has been exceptionally successful over the last 50 years. I found the same culture for excellence when I entered CGG in 2005, and this is why CGG remains at the forefront in processing and imaging.

What’s special about rowing as a sport?

Few other sports employ so many of the muscles in the body, at the same time as improving the capacity of heart and lungs.

But above all it is a very aesthetic sport as expressed in the quote I wrote in a book about Norwegian rowing in (Gold and Pain, 2012): ‘As all life pulsates, rowing shifts between phases where work and rest are repeated and repeated. Like the FIRST

pulsating heartbeat, or like the changes of seasons, rowing alternates between workrest-work-rest. Like the mantra of meditation, the repetitive monotony of rowing gives the soul harmony and balance’ Do you have any special memo­ ries from the Seoul Olympics and your home reception in Norway?

I recall a high level of stress before the final, as the coaches forgot to put the number on our boat and we had a false start. I also remember the fun and the parties afterwards in an Olympic village with 8000 athletes from all over the world.

Are you still competing?

Yes, I join international veteran regattas with rowing buddies from USA, Canada and the UK. The training is mostly from our summer house by the sea close to Oslo where I have my own Lite boat which is excellent in the rough waters in the Oslo fjord.

Your wife Kristin was a Norwegian member of parliament for four years. How was that for you?

I was very proud of her and I joined her on several events where I had the opportunity to gain a deeper insight into the political system in Norway and to meet the central politicians and decision makers.

Last question. Got to ask. Do rowers like to party?

Definitely. In my active career, we could not party for months before the important events, which meant that the parties afterwards were pretty wild involving large quantities of alcohol and risky activities like swimming in canals or climbing outside buildings to visit French female rowers.

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CROSSTALK

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

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The UK — a transition like no other Those knowledgeable in the science of electricity will doubtless Pressure to show green credentials is evident and Glasgow be familiar with Lichtenberg figures. They result from a branchmore than meets the criteria. The city has set a target for carbon ing electric discharge often with a fern pattern that sometimes neutrality by 2030, aims to be one of the greenest cities in Europe appears on the surface or in the interior of insulating materials. through its Sustainable Glasgow campaign, and is fourth in the These phenomena were discovered by Georg Christoph Lichtenworld in the Global Destination Sustainability Index.

Yet politicians of all the leading UK parties must be squirming berg, a celebrated 18th Century German physicist and intellectual known for his pioneering experiments in ‘electrical treeing’. to explain the paradox of a Scottish venue for an international What does this have to do with Britain’s energy transition gathering seriously committed to reducing carbon emissions with challenge? Almost nothing is the answer, except that counted reduction of dependence on the oil and gas industry top of the among Lichtenberg’s many talents was his aptitude for philoagenda. sophical and social commentary often in the form of memorable For the UK Conservative government it is an extraordinarily aphorisms. These are to be found most notably in his posthumous difficult political balancing act. Brexit was rejected in Scotland Sudelbücher (Scrapbooks). The surviving manuscripts are lodged but now it has to negotiate phasing out of the old (offshore oil and at his alma mater, the University of Göttingen, and a statue gas business) and ushering in the new (green initiatives/promomemorializing the great man stands in the tion of renewables) conscious of alienating town’s marketplace.

‘Official statements have Scottish voters when another independence One enigmatic pearl of wisdom from the referendum is in the air. Ironically some recognized the energy of the same dilemma applies to the majormaster goes as follows: ‘I cannot say whether ity party in Scotland, the Scottish National things will get better if we change; what I transition imperative’ can say is they must change if they are to Party (SNP). get better.’ This seems to characterize the UK’s conundrum over There are just six Scottish Conservative MPs in the UK energy issues in the era of climate change. The government could parliament outnumbered by 47 SNP members. On 6 May Scottish be perceived as enthusiastically embracing the need to move away Parliamentary elections may well see the SNP win a majority of from fossil fuels. This marks a remarkable conversion for a country seats having narrowly failed with 63 out of 129 in 2016. Such an made great in the 19th century when coal was king and then prooutcome will almost certainly embolden Nicola Sturgeon, SNP vided with an economic liferaft in the latter part of the last century leader and Scotland’s First Minister to honour the party’s pledge by revenues from the fortuitous finding of oil and gas offshore. to call for another referendum on Scottish independence.

In the last few months, official statements have recognized Oil and gas operations offshore Scotland have been a the energy transition imperative with a 10 Point Plan for a Green lightning rod in Scottish political debate since the 1970s.

Industrial Revolution announced in November by Prime Minister An unlikely by-election win in the Scottish constituency of Boris Johnson and publication of an Energy White paper in Hamilton in 1967 by the legendary Winnie Ewing, now in her December. Cynics may of course note that this coming November nineties, provided the catalyst for the rise of the SNP. The party the UK is hosting the high-profile COP26 international gathering was established as far back as 1934 but could never unlock the of signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on electoral seats held by the traditional parties. SNP’s popularity Climate Change (UNFCCC), a treaty agreed in 1994. Glasgow took off in the 1970s fuelled by the slogan ‘It’s Scotland’s Oil’. was chosen as the host city.

The implication was that the oil revenues from production

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offshore had been stolen by the UK Exchequer and were not largely been driven by falling production and higher tax-deductible benefiting Scotland sufficiently. expenditure, according to the Office of Budget Responsibility.

That is not the whole story. All the opposition parties in WestTo head off trouble, the Labour government in 1979 facilitated the first referendum on a form of devolution. This failed to gain minster, not only the SNP, can berate the government over the ugly a sufficient majority of the electorate in Scotland but, in 1999, a financial mess emerging in these latter days of North Sea oil. The problem is who pays for decommissioning of all that infrastructure second referendum established today’s Scottish Parliament with tax-varying powers within the UK political system, which is still planted on the seabed in the good times. There is a debate too about dominated by Westminster. the environmental and safety impact if, as is likely, a number of structures will be left in the sea after partial The SNP today still trades on the legacy dismantling. resentment felt by many over the UK gov‘Latest twist in the UK The official figure for the cost of decomernment’s offshore oil policy which offered energy plot was the North missioning offshore UK is currently £50 minimal special treatment for Scotland. But billion, of which the taxpayer is likely to be these days there is less to argue about and the Sea Transition Deal’ on the hook for £24 billion in the years to narrative is beginning to lose its relevance. come, according to the National Audit Office. This is because of Nicola Sturgeon in 2019 announced a major green plan for Scotsignificant tax reliefs granted to oil companies, which allow operland headlined by a commitment to achieve net zero greenhouse ators to deduct up to 75% of their spending on decommissioning gas emissions by 2045. This was not simply a moral obligation, but from their tax. This can include reclaiming corporation tax paid also an economic and social opportunity, she said at the time. But in since 2002. Who else but the government will be liable for the total March this year she was put on the spot when asked to comment on cost of decommissioning those oil installations owned by operators reports (never confirmed) that the UK government was considering that go bankrupt or lack the funds to carry out the work themselves. a ban on all future UK offshore exploration. Her mixed message The upside of decommissioning operations already recwas to warn that an immediate ban on new North Sea exploration ognized is that UK companies will have the opportunity to could cost ‘jobs, livelihoods and living standards’ in the north-east develop dismantling expertise and specialized equipment that region, but to concede that ‘difficult decisions’ in the context of can serve offshore provinces in many areas of the world. The climate change lay ahead for the next parliament. global decommissioning sector is conservatively estimated to If you look at the value of domestic oil and gas production be worth £270 billion. Orkney Islands Council is the latest to the UK, it comes from energy security, i.e., the meeting of the authority to make a pitch to be the site for UK decommissioncountry’s energy needs. That is something governments surely ing operations, proposing a former naval base at Lyness in have to take into account unless there is a viable alternative. The the sheltered deep waters of Scapa Flow. production of oil and gas in 2018 accounted for more than oneThe latest twist in the UK energy plot was the North Sea Tranthird of the energy sector’s total contribution and 1.2% of overall sition Deal announced on 24 March between the UK government UK GDP (equal to around £24 billion), according to the UKOG and the private sector UKOG, said to be the first partnership of its Economic 2019 report. kind for a G7 country. The landmark agreement provides assistance Renewables are catching up. UK government publication for the oil and gas industry’s transition to clean, green energy Energy Trends reported that energy consumption in 2020 was low (including hydrogen production, carbon capture and storage, and as Covid-19 restrictions affected economic output, leisure, and decommissioning) while supporting up to 40,000 jobs across the travel. Energy requirements for industrial use and services (e.g., supply chain. Extracting oil and gas on the UK Continental Shelf shops, restaurants, offices) were down 8% on 2019. Despite warmis directly responsible for around 3.5% of the UK’s greenhouse gas er weather, domestic demand was up 2% as more people stayed at emissions. home. Transport demand dropped 28% compared to 2019.

Deal highlights include the UK no longer providing financial However, aided by windy conditions in the Spring of 2020 support for the fossil fuel energy sector overseas; setting standards renewable generation reached record levels and contributed a for transition to a clean, green economy without leaving communi42.9% share of generation, outpacing for the first time annual ties and vital industries behind. A joint government-industry sector fossil fuel generation, which contributed 38.5% of generation, a investment of up to £16 billion by 2030 to reduce carbon emissions record low and down from 75.4% in 2010. Despite low output is promised. from nuclear, strong renewable performance pushed low carbon Come November these transition plans will allow the UK generation to a record 59% government to hold its head up high at the Glasgow COP26. But As far as contributions to UK Treasury from offshore oil and delivery on the promises may prove more problematic. George gas go, that ship has sailed. Since 2008-09 UK oil and gas revenues Christoph Lichtenberg sardonically observed: ‘To make a vow is a have fallen from £10.6 billion (0.7 per cent of GDP) to £0.6 greater sin than to break one’. billion (0.03 per cent of GDP) in 2019-20. The fall in receipts has

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

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Offshore Guyana set for 16 wells

Renewables spending is narrowing the gap with oil and gas, says Rystad Energy Capital expenditure for renewable energy projects is set for a new record in 2021 of $243 billion, narrowing the gap with oil and gas spending, which is projected to be $311 billion, according to Rystad Energy research.

Renewables capex is set for another record year, picking up where last year left off, when spending hit $224 billion.

By contrast, oil and gas capex this year is expected to stay in line with 2020’s $306 billion – a far cry from the industry’s better days in 2019 when E&Ps spent $422 billion.

Capex for renewables is now just 22% below the estimate for upstream oil and gas projects. Most of the renewable energy spending has been on onshore wind projects, rising to $100 billion from $94 billion in 2020. Solar PV spending is expected to climb to $96 billion in 2021 from $88 billion last year, while offshore wind will see capex grow to $46 billion from $43 billion.

Most of the expenditure stems from Asia, which has 156 gigawatts (GW) of capacity under construction as of January 2021, followed by Europe with 32 GW. China’s decision to slowly reduce subsidy assistance from January forced many projects to start construction early, which further supported spending activity.

Much of the spending is down to China’s 800-megawatt (MW) Rudong offshore wind farm and the 2 GW Zhuozi Coun-

ty Project, as well as Orsted’s 1.4 GW Hornsea 2 project off the UK. Upstream oil and gas capex is expected to increase by less than 2% in 2021, with spending on greenfield projects declining by 6%. However, sanctioning activity is estimated to increase this year by 30%, mainly due to Qatargas’ $30 billion North Field East development, which makes up 33% of the total budget to be sanctioned this year.

‘Last year’s events forced leading oil and gas businesses to look at strategies to reduce exposure to the risky market amid the energy transition. Oilfield service suppliers, for instance, have started a considerable transformation, hoping to be more relevant in a greener market and become a more attractive option for investors,’ said Chinmayi Teggi, energy service analyst at Rystad Energy.

Rystad Energy has compared the revenues of 170 listed suppliers exposed to the upstream oil and gas, wind and solar markets. Its analysis reveals that while oil and gas-focused businesses on average experienced a revenue drop of 23% in 2020 from the previous year, wind and solar PV-focused businesses enjoyed an 18% growth in sales.

Quarterly revenue for service companies, including geoscience firms, exposed to the upstream sector has deteriorated steeply, with fourth-quarter revenue last year slumping 25% from a year earlier FIRST

amid a lack of new contracts and slow execution of backlog work. Revenue from well services and seismic segments fell last year by 35% from 2019 levels, while drilling tools revenue shrank 25%.

However, some positive performance was seen from giants Schlumberger, Baker Hughes and Halliburton, driven by a combination of backlog execution improvements and an uptick in US shale activity towards the end of the year.

The overall revenue of these companies gained 6% in the fourth quarter from the preceding three months.

By contrast, service companies working in the wind and solar sectors experienced growth in the fourth quarter of last year compared to 2019. Service players working on wind projects recorded a 15% year-on-year boost to revenues for the fourth quarter of 2020, with full-year revenues improving by 20%. Sales at service providers working on solar projects rose 3% in the fourth quarter from Q4 2019 and climbed 14% for the full year.

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Seismic data companies could be at forefront of US wind power revolution, says TGS

Costs of offshore windfarms have been decreasing rapidly in the past year or so.

TGS has claimed that geoscience companies have a huge opportunity to acquire the seismic data that will aid the revolution in offshore wind energy in the US. Research from the company showed that rapidly decreasing costs for building offshore windfarms would lead to some 30 GW of offshore windfarms being built off the east and west coasts of America by 2030.

‘Seismic companies have decades of data and knowledge of the geology offshore US,’ said the company.

‘Whether fixed or floating turbine solutions for offshore wind projects, seismic and other geophysical imaging techniques will play a big part in determining all constriction requirements,’ said the company in its latest ‘Insights’ article.

‘One of the greatest challenges yet to face the offshore wind industry will be sourcing the right expertise to design and build the necessary structures. This issue is particularly true when you look at the number of projects looking to be executed at the same time or within a 12-to-24-month period. The answer will surely come from the offshore oil and gas sector – especially as it has been hit so hard by the recent industry downturn – leaving a highly technical and capable workforce available to support offshore wind projects.’

TGS said that there are more than a dozen offshore projects in progress with the mid-Atlantic, stretching from New 20

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York down to Virginia, developing into the largest regional market in the US. Between 2012 and 2018, costs were reduced by more than 60% and operators of these projects can expect consistent profit margins, it added.

In the first weeks of his presidency, Joe Biden signed a number of executive orders to combat climate change. The new orders will review the permitting process and evaluate how the US can double its offshore wind output in the coming years.

On 29 March the Biden administration designated an area between Long Island and New Jersey as a priority offshore wind zone to establish 30 GW of offshore wind turbines by 2030. The administration has confirmed it will accelerate permitting for projects off the Atlantic coast, offer $3 billion in federal loan guarantees for offshore wind projects, and upgrade ports to support wind construction activities.

A bill is being introduced in the state of Oregon to establish a task force on floating wind energy and enable the development of 3 GW of commercial-scale floating wind projects within federal waters off Oregon’s coast by 2030.

Research company Aegir Insights forecasts a build-out of floating offshore wind capacity of between 6 GW and 11 GW by 2035 in California, Oregon, Hawaii, Michigan, New York, and Maine, with the base case giving a result of 9 GW. 2021

PGS wins 3D survey from supermajor offshore Egypt PGS has won a contract for a high-fidelity 3D exploration programme from a supermajor offshore Egypt.

The survey will be acquired using an extended long offset (ELO) configuration with Ramform Tethys towing a wide multi-sensor GeoStreamer spread with an additional source vessel several kilometres ahead. This will enable efficient recording of offsets up to 16 km, critical for imaging deeper complex exploration targets, said PGS. The source vessel will be towing a specially designed low-frequency source.

The ELO survey design combines optimal spatial sampling for better subsurface imaging together with long offset acquisition for accurate velocity model-building.

‘This contract secures PGS vessels to operate in Egyptian waters until May 2021, building on an extended campaign for several supermajors since July 2020. In a rapidly changing energy market, exploration seismic requires increasingly advanced survey designs, such as the ELO configuration, to generate high-quality seismic data in complex geologies,’ said Nathan Oliver, EVP sales and services at PGS. The deal is expected to be completed in mid-2021.

Ramform Tethys (Courtesy of PGS).

INDUSTRY NEWS

Northern Lights CCS project gets final seal of approval Norway has given final approval to the development plan for Northern Lights, which is the storage part of the Longship carbon capture and storage (CCS) project.

Final state support agreements have been signed to approve the project that will receive captured CO2 transported by ship to Øygarden municipality on the western coast of Norway. Here, the gas will be temporarily stored before it is sent through a pipeline to the storage site on the continental shelf.

At the storage site CO2 will be pumped down to a sealed reservoir for permanent storage 2600 m below the seabed in the northern part of the North Sea, southwest of the Troll field and east of the Oseberg field.

Total investment under the development plan is estimated at six billion kroner ($710 million), and annual operating costs at around 370 million kroner ($44 million).

The facility will have capacity to store 1.5 million tonnes CO2 annually, and a planned operation period of 25 years.

Northern Lights will be built and operated by the company Northern Lights JV, comprising Equinor, Shell and Total. Having captured CO2 for the Longship project, Northern Lights plans to sell additional capacity. The approved development plan includes an injection well, but an extra injection well and a future phase two for the storage project still require government approval.

Northern Lights is in dialogue with several European entities regarding possible

use of the storage, said Norway’s Ministry of Petroleum and Energy. ‘The outlook is good. Northern Lights has already signed MoUs with eight companies, and I believe more will want to connect to the storage now that the project has been approved,’ said petroleum and energy minister Tina Bru. ‘We have made a business model where the companies must succeed commercially to recover their shares of the investments,’ she added.

ogy, electrification of transport, green shipping and carbon capture and storage (CSS) as well as the use of hydrogen as a potential long-term solution for decarbonizing the energy sector.

‘Norway is highly relevant as a partner for the EU and has research institutions, technology, a business sector and expertise that will play an important part in developing a climate-neutral Europe,’ said minister of foreign affairs, Ine Eriksen Søreide.

Northern Lights project; source: Equinor.

Construction work is proceeding on the CO2 terminal in Øygarden.

Meanwhile, Norway and the EU have agreed to strengthen cooperation on promoting energy transition. The agreement will cover carbon taxes and the circular economy, with a focus on battery technol-

The EU and Norway already cooperate closely through the EEA Agreement, which will include large parts of Europe’s proposed Green Deal. Norway and the EU also have a close climate partnership under the 2019 agreement on achieving the 2030 climate target.

CGG refinances its debt CGG is refinancing its debt by raising $1.2 billion in 8.75% senior secured notes due in 2027 and 7.75% senior secured notes due in 2027.

The company has also arranged a $100 million revolving credit facility (RCF) agreement secured by the same security package as the notes with its pricing linked in part to greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.

Sophie Zurquiyah, chief executive officer of CGG, said: ‘Our successful over-subscribed debt refinancing highlights the financial market’s confidence in our company. With this transaction,

we have streamlined our capital structure, which is now more flexible, less expensive and includes a credit facility.

We have liquidity and expect positive net cash flow generation in 2021 and beyond.’

CGG intends to use the net proceeds from the offering, together with cash on hand, to repurchase its first lien senior secured notes due in 2023 for a principal amount of $300 million and €280 million ($235 million); satisfy and discharge in full the second lien senior secured notes due in 2024 of $355 million and €80 million ($70 million); and pay all fees and expenses.

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Meanwhile, CGG has been awarded three major seismic imaging projects

by BP. Two of the contracts will be in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico and one offshore Trinidad & Tobago.

The projects will start in Q1/Q2 this year and complete with cloud delivery of the data no later than Q4 of 2021.

Utilizing CGG Cloud supercomputing, imaging specialists at CGG’s Houston subsurface imaging centre will employ compute-intensive data-driven proprietary algorithms, such as time-lag full-waveform inversion and least-squares migration.

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PGS reprocesses West of Shetland UK data PGS is reprocessing 8000 km2 of 3D data West of Shetland in the North Sea, offshore UK. Despite big exploration successes in the region, challenges related to subsurface structure and stratigraphy remain, said PGS. Fully migrated 3D data to provide an improved and consistent regional geological perspective will be ready in January 2022, it added.

West of Shetland.

The 2021 PGS MegaSurveyPlus rejuvenation project targets data including GeoStreamer multisensor data acquired in

2013 and 2015. The GeoStreamer component adds content with a very high signalto-noise ratio and a broad bandwidth into a data mix of various vintages.

‘New broadband reprocessing of a largely conventional dataset will help to confidently derisk upcoming projects in West of Shetland. Advances in processing and imaging techniques, combined with increased compute power, mean that we can extract more details from the data, improve velocity models, and deliver more reliable and detailed images that will improve sub- and post-basalt imaging in general and sub-basalt assessment in particular,’ said Christopher Schou Watts, VP sales and services at PGS. There are giant fields in multiple petroleum plays in the area, where nearfield exploration can exploit access to infrastructure. Substantial growth potential is expected in the Flett Sub-Basin extending to the northeast where new discoveries can supplement reserves and expand production from existing facilities.

The Faroe Shetland Basin experienced a major Cretaceous to early Paleogene rift event, that was followed by extensive

intrusions and volcanism in the latest Paleocene period. The main proven reservoir units in the area are Paleocene suband intra-basaltic sandstones, which are found along the Rosebank structural trend and generated by inversion tectonics in the Eocene section deposited within volcanic extrusions. This play is difficult to image but very prolific, as demonstrated in the Rosebank field and other discoveries in the Flett Sub-Basin.

Shows and smaller discoveries also attest to the petroleum potential in the Cretaceous and Eocene sections, said PGS. The former is particularly relevant towards the flanks of the Flett Sub-Basin and the adjacent Corona and Flett/Rona ridges. Additional imaging challenges in the area are posed by shallow features such as injectites and gas chimneys while intrusives and sills further obscure the Paleocene and deeper sections.

PGS added that key factors in successful exploration and petroleum potential evaluation of the area are structural/combined trap geometry definition, the use of prestack seismic attributes, and accurate resource assessment based on reliable subsurface data.

TGS launches latest version of northwest Europe wells database TGS has released the North West Europe Facies Map Browser (FMB) 4.6.0. providing insights across the UK and Norway Continental Shelf.

The latest version, the result of a year-long process of data conditioning and geological interpretation, includes all new E&A wells from the UK and Norway Continental Shelf, new data types, such as porosity and permeability data from core measurements, and mud gas logs. Jurassic, Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary stratigraphy upgrades have been completed utilizing well data and the TGS seismic library to provide a framework for developing play concepts and delineating prospects in both frontier and mature near-field areas.

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FMB 4.6.0 desktop browser includes functionality updates and improvements to the performance of the query and visualization tools to make it easier to use what TGS claims is the largest cross-border well database in North West Europe.

The North West Europe FMB database continues to expand as work commences on the next annual release, scheduled for release in Q1 2022.

Will Ashby, executive vice-president Eastern Hemisphere at TGS, said that the tool supports both conventional oil and gas exploration and regional carbon storage assessment: ‘The Facies Map Browser is an invaluable resource that provides the most current subsurface

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data and expert geologic knowledge to enable better quality and more informed investment decisions.’

Facies Map Browser covering Northwest Europe and the Barents Sea.

INDUSTRY NEWS

President Biden launches review of US oil and gas leasing The Biden administration has launched a review on the sale of US drilling rights on federal land and waters.

Several weeks after oil and gas sales were suspended, the study is set to guide the US Interior Department’s decisions about selling leases on roughly a 10th of US land and almost all its coastal waters, including in the Gulf of Mexico. It also could dictate the conditions for any future lease sales, including new environmental safeguards, higher costs to buy tracts and limits on territory that is made available for leasing.

‘The federal oil and gas programme is not serving the American public well. It’s time to take a close look at how to best manage our nation’s natural resources with current and future generations in mind,’ said Laura Daniel-Davis, the Department of Interior’s principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management.

The department was due hold a virtual forum on the future of leasing on March 25 to hear from industry representatives and environmental groups.

The Interior department’s public consultation was due to end on 15 April, with plans to outline recommended changes this summer. Among recommendations being considered are higher royalty payments, location restrictions and even limits on the number of tracts held by individual companies.

That report ‘will wrestle with some fundamental questions about the oil and gas programme, including whether it’s delivering a fair return to American taxpayers, whether it fairly accounts for the impacts of climate, whether there’s adequate opportunity for public input, including from Indian tribes, and whether we have the right mechanisms in place to avoid irreparable harm to wildlife, water, sacred sites and beyond,’ said interior secretary Deb Haaland.

A previous Interior department examination of the federal coal leasing programme that began under former President Barack Obama – only to be ended under President Trump – had been expected to take three years.

Conservationists claim that the current approach is a bad deal for taxpayers with annual rental fees for some leased acres costing less than a cup of coffee.

‘The federal oil and gas leasing programme needs serious reform if America is going to address climate change,’ said Drew Caputo, vice president at Earthjustice. ‘Nearly 25% of this country’s climate-cooking emissions come from fossil fuels pumped or mined from lands and waters that belong to all Americans. This is unsustainable.’

About 22% of total US crude supplies and 12% of US natural gas came from federal lands and waters in 2019, according to the Energy Information Administration.

SEG and AAPG to merge their annual meetings The Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) have agreed to hold joint annual meetings, the first of which will be held from 26 September to 1 October 2021 at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. The event will mark the first time the two groups’ annual conventions have been held together since 1955 It is hoped that the merger of AAPG’s 2021 Annual Convention and Exhibition

(ACE) and SEG’s 2021 International Exhibition and 91st Annual Meeting (SEG21) will facilitate a greater exchange of ideas between the organisations. ‘It ‘answers the stated wishes of our members and our exhibition and sponsorship patrons,’ said AAPG president Rick Fritz.

‘It also represents a strategic response to shifting industry conditions.’

The agreement is for five years, covering the organizations’ annual meetings through to 2025.

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Fugro opens marine chemistry lab in Scotland

Fugro said the lab would cater for its renewables client base.

Fugro has opened marine chemistry and biology laboratories within the Heriot-Watt University Research Park in Edinburgh, UK. The chemistry laboratories will be able to simultaneously analyse a wider range of environmental contaminants in marine sediments, biota and water, from background trace levels to more contaminated sources, while the new marine biology laboratory will allow Fugro to expand its marine taxonomic service.

Fugro said this increased capacity will support its growing green industry client base in the offshore wind, marine cables and coastal development sectors, offering them an expanded range and increased capacity of laboratory services, including marine fauna identification and a range of organic and inorganic analysis.

John ten Hoope, Fugro’s director of marine site characterization for Europe and Africa, said: ‘These new facilities demonstrate Fugro’s commitment to marine environmental services and build on over 25 years’ experience in acquiring, analysing and advising on marine environmental Geo-data.’

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CGG sells 3D data offshore Australia to Emperor Energy Emperor Energy (EMP) has purchased newly acquired 3D seismic data covering the Judith Gas Field and Greater Judith Structure, offshore southeast Australia, from CGG. This data was acquired by CGG during 2020 as part of a multi-client 3D Seismic Survey that covered much of the offshore Gippsland Basin including the Judith Gas Field. Seismic acquisition was carried out using 7000m-long acquisition cables.

Preliminary processed 3D data, which includes a MAZ merge with CGG’s previous legacy reprocessed data, has been received by EMP with final processed data expected to be delivered

by CGG later in 2021.

Initial examination of the new data

by EMP’s consulting geologists and geophysicists has confirmed a major improvement in seismic data quality compared to previous seismic imagery, said Emperor. Further improvement in data quality is expected in the final processed data volume. High seismic amplitude (low impedance) response is a potential indicator of gas. Seismic sections across the Judith Gas Field indicate that high amplitude/low impedance responses are well developed in the sections correlating with the Judith gas sands intersected in the Judith-1 well, and also in the interpreted underlying Longtom reservoirs, and can be seen

extending significantly up-dip into the Greater Judith Structure from the original Judith-1 gas discovery drilled in 1989 by Shell.

The improved seismic data quality in the new seismic volume will allow Amplitude Versus Offset (AVO) modelling to be employed as a direct hydrocarbon indicator (DHI) in these reservoir sands across the Greater Judith Structure.

Initial examination of the new seismic data also shows the presence of high amplitude responses indicative of the possible presence of gas in interpreted Kipper Gas Sands extending from the currently producing Kipper Gas Field (operated by Exxon Mobil) into the southeastern corner of Vic/P47. The possible extension of the Kipper Gas Field into Vic/P47 will be assessed by future work.

Detailed interpretation and analysis of the seismic data will continue throughout April and into early May. This will include redefinition of fault blocks and gas sand horizon continuity within each block, seismic correlation against the Kipper 1 and South East Longtom 1 wells along with AVO analysis to highlight potential gas reservoirs.

Emperor Energy director Phil McNamara said: ‘The proximity of the Judith Gas field to the Rosedale Fault in the North had previously affected seismic

data quality as you get closer to the fault resulting in poor seismic response as you progress up-dip from the Judith-1 gas discovery. The new MC3D seismic data volume, including MAZ merge with earlier CGG legacy reprocessing, improves seismic definition and continuity and to a large extent overcomes this problem.

‘The company has completed a project pre-feasibility study based on four production wells achieving 80 Million Standard Cubic Feet per day field production over 25 years. We now have the seismic data and tools required to accurately refine the preferred locations of these wells and what the expected total gas production could be from each.’

The deal with CGG provides Emperor Energy with access to survey data over and around the Judith Gas Field comprising 37 km2 within Exploration Permit Vic/P47 as well as further areas outside of Vic/P47 to the west, south and east that are required to fully define the Greater Judith structure.

The cost of the licence to Emperor Energy is a total of AUD $732,180.90 ($588,000) The 100% Emperor Energy-owned Judith Gas Field is within the Vic/P47 Permit in the offshore Gippsland Basin, Victoria and is estimated to contain 2C contingent gas Resource of 150 Bcf and P50 an unrisked prospective gas resource of 1.226 Tcf.

Polarcus liquidators present their first report Polarcus’ Joint Provisional Liquidators have filed their first report to the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands.

The report summarizes the work undertaken since the JPLs’ appointment on 8 February, provides an estimated financial position of the company and its subsidiaries and sets out further work.

The JPLs are continuing negotiations with certain secured creditors. In due course, the JPLs expect to decide whether to place the company into official liquidation.

Polarcus ran a fleet of 3D vessels.

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They confirmed that trading in Polarcus’ shares will continue to be suspended and the company will not release a financial report for Q4, 2020.

Meanwhile, Polarcus bondholders have voted to approve certain working capital loans and a sale and purchase agreement in relation to the issued shares in Polarcus Selma Ltd. Eligible bondholders holding more than 60% of the voting bonds have informed the company that they will vote in favour of the resolution.

INDUSTRY NEWS

ION wins contract for 3D surveys offshore Kenya ION Geophysical has won an exclusive agreement for 3D multi-client programmes offshore Kenya. The agreement includes both 3D new acquisition offshore the Lamu Basin and reimaging vintage data offshore Kenya.

The company said that offshore Kenya is an attractive area with a proven petroleum system. However, it has remained underexplored, in part due to lack of available 3D data. The final shape and size of new 3D programmes will be dictated by client input and underwriting.

‘We are pleased Kenya’s Ministry of Energy and Petroleum selected ION to increase the understanding and promote the hydrocarbon potential of these offshore resources to attract future investment,’ said Joe Gagliardi, senior vice president of ION’s Ventures group. ‘The programme

will leverage our extensive data library and knowledge offshore Kenya and East Africa. In an increasingly competitive environment for seismic data, we have geographic exclusivity in a promising, underexploited geography to execute our 3D strategy, for both new acquisition and reimaging programmes. Kenya represents a fourth significant opportunity to diversify our successful 3D reimaging, in addition to Mexico, Brazil and Mauritania.’

Meanwhile, the super major using ION’s Gemini extended frequency source on a proprietary survey has extended the deployment. The extension will nearly double the duration and area of the original programme.

Chris Usher, ION’s president and chief executive officer, said. ‘The survey extension is a significant vote of

confidence by the super major and is now expected to wrap up in late May. In response to strong industry demand, we plan to increase Gemini capacity four-fold for programmes this summer.’

Fugro teams up with dCarbonX on energy transition projects

Axxis refinancing to be put to a vote Axxis Geo Solutions has drafted its court-protected ‘company reconstruction’ which will be put to the company’s creditors to vote on.

‘We have outlined the draft for the reconstruction and implication for stakeholders as part of the reconstruction process, and expect the plan to be ready for a creditor vote after Easter,’ said Nina Skage, board member of Axxis.

On 16 February, 2021 the company announced its decision to file for a court-protected reconstruction. The District Court of Asker and Bærum in Norway subsequently appointed attorneyat-law Jon Skjørshammer of Kvale Advokatfirma as reconstructor and chairman of the debt restructuring committee, while Lars Erik Lærum and Svein Knudsen were appointed as members of the creditors’ committee.

The proposed plan by the company involves a forced cash

ION Lamu Basin multi-client area offshore Kenya (Courtesy of ION Geophysical).

settlement in the range of 5-20% of outstanding debts. Creditors will have an option to convert their outstanding claim to shares in the company. The conversion price will be set to 0.5 NOK/share ($0.06).

Secured debt to Export Credit Norway has been settled in full through a sale of Neptune Naiad and related equipment.

A bond loan will not to be included in the forced debt settlement.

The proposed plan would be financed through raising new equity. There is a committed term sheet signed by a group of investors willing to inject $17-20 million into the company.

‘The company has received an alternative proposal, which has been carefully considered. Axxis considers the proposal not to be feasible due to a set of legal, commercial and financial reasons,’ said Skage.

Fugro has signed an agreement with dCarbonX, a geo-energy resource company, for decarbonization exploration projects supporting the development of offshore geo-energy resources in the UK and Ireland.

Fugro’s geo-data acquisition, analysis and advice will provide dCarbonX with information to characterize sites and support decision-making at the project concept stage. Fugro’s consultancy services in the SFA will include comprehensive desktop studies to derisk ground conditions, recommendations on the survey or ground investigation data required, baseline environmental, geochemical and bathymetric surveys, and geophysical and geotechnical site investigation campaigns.

Laura Hughes, Fugro country director UK, said: ‘Fugro is deeply committed to accelerating the energy transition by developing geo-energy resources such as CCS, hydrogen storage and geothermal energy.’

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Offshore Guyana set for 16 wells this year

Stena DrillMAX has arrived in Guyana.

Rystad Energy expects exploration activity in Guyana to rebound with an annual record of 16 wells.

Guyana’s exploration activity will be spearheaded by ExxonMobil as operator of the Stabroek and Canje blocks.

The company’s drilling activity will focus on firming up resources in the southeastern part of the Stabroek block, where the operator identified deeper plays underneath the existing discoveries and is now eyeing the unexplored northwestern parts of the block. ’Rystad Energy data suggests that close to 300 million barrels of oil equivalent has been discovered on average for each exploration well (wildcat and appraisal) drilled in the country over the past six years. With around 16 exploration wells planned, including some in riskier frontier regions, 2021 holds a lot of promise,’ said Santosh Kumar, analyst with Rystad Energy’s upstream team.

ExxonMobil’s fleet of drillships in Guyana is set to increase to six with the arrival of the Noble Sam Croft in April.

Three drillships are currently operating in the greater Liza area. The recently arrived Stena DrillMAX has already started drilling activities on the Longtail-2 appraisal well, while the Stena Carron drillship, which recently concluded drilling Bulletwood-1, has now spud the Jabillo-1 exploration well in the Canje block.

The operator and its partners plan to deploy four floating production, storage and offloading units (FPSOs) to develop the existing resources within the block.

However, the supermajor is expected to ramp up drilling activities, as it plans to have at least five FPSOs online by 2026. Success at this year’s Mako-2 and Uaru-2 wells on the Stabroek block could potentially firm up the Mako/Uaru area as a candidate for the next FPSO location.

On the Canje block, plans are in place to drill two wells in 2021 in addition to the uncommercial Bulletwood-1 find, with the Jabillo well already in progress.

However, the year’s first completed well, Bulletwood-1 in the ExxonMobil-operated Canje block, encountered quality reservoirs but non-commercial hydrocarbons, according to Westmount Energy, which holds a stake in Canje partner JHI Associates. The well was targeting more than 500 million barrels of mean prospective resources in a prospect similar to Liza in the neighbouring Stabroek block.

Canada-based explorer CGX Energy operates the Demerara and Corentyne blocks with 66.67% interests, with Frontera Energy as its partner. The plan for 2021 consists of up to two exploration

wells, at a combined estimated cost of about $90 million.

There are no drilling plans reported for this year as yet on the Repsol-operated Kanuku block and Tullow Oil’s Orinduik block. However, 3D seismic reprocessing is scheduled to mature prospects for future drilling.

Meanwhile, in eastern Guyanese waters there are only two unallocated blocks: Block C, which lies east of the Kaieteur block and north of Stabroek, and a smaller 1325 km2 block, which was relinquished by the Canje consortium.

The other unallocated offshore deepwater region lies northwest of Guyana’s offshore sector. This area, formerly called the Roraima block, is bordered by the Kaieteur and Stabroek blocks. It is, however, part of a territorial dispute between Guyana and Venezuela.

In the middle of this booming exploration activity, Guyana is considering a new bidding round in 2022. Drilling results will be eagerly watched by the services industry, as more exploration success off Guyana would translate into welcome opportunities after the market slump of 2020, said Rystad.

Meanwhile Rystad Energy has warned that extended vaccination campaign hiccups could put the recovery of up to 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil demand is at risk in 2021.

Rystad Energy currently forecasts global oil demand in 2021 at 95.2 million bpd, but under a slow vaccination scenario, oil demand in 2021 could only average 94.2 million bpd.

Chevron launches $300 million clean energy fund Chevron has launched its $300-million Future Energy Fund II focused on clean energy.

The fund will focus on innovation in industrial decarbonization, emerging mobility, energy decentralization and the growing circular carbon economy.

Meanwhile, Chevron Technology Ventures is investing in Baseload Capital, a

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Sweden-based private investment company focused on developing low-temperature geothermal and heat power assets (harnessed from geothermal or waste heat).

Chevron and Baseload are planning pilot projects to test new technology.

Baseload Capital operates in Japan, Taiwan, Iceland, and the US and as it develops in these regions and expands to

2021

new markets, Chevron and Baseload will look for commercial geothermal and heat power opportunities in additional Chevron operations.

Baseload’s chief executive officer Alexander Helling said: ‘Chevron adds expertise in drilling, engineering, exploration and more. These assets are expected to accelerate our ability to deploy heat power.’

INDUSTRY NEWS

Sercel and Kappa launch marine seismic acquisition equipment Sercel and Kappa Offshore Solutions have launched PIKSEL, a compact solution for acquiring marine seismic data for high-resolution 3D imaging of targeted offshore areas.

Using Sercel’s Sentinel streamer technology and Kappa Offshore Solution’s expertise in equipment integration and hydrodynamic modelling, PIKSEL draws on the Sentinel streamer’s hydrophone design for low noise as well as an optimized rigging and handling system that minimizes vibration. For enhanced broadband imaging, it can also utilize Sercel’s Sentinel MS 3-C multi-sensor streamer to ensure the most accurate and noise-free signal possible.

Sercel claimed that its hydrodynamic shape has optimized towing speed and that PIKSEL can be towed deeper than any other solution, allowing for data recording in rough seas and thereby reducing downtime.

For improved operational efficiency, the solution can be containerized to enable quick installation onboard a range of vessel types.

Thibaut Choquer, Kappa Offshore Solutions CEO, said: ‘The system paves the way for geophysical and geotechnical data integration, which is of particular interest for the development of offshore renewable energies.’

Emmanuelle Dubu, Sercel CEO, said: ‘The new PIKSEL solution makes it significantly easier to conduct continuous surveys even in poor weather conditions.’

Meanwhile, Sercel has announced that its equipment is being deployed on a 3D mega-crew survey for a big North African geophysical company. The crew is operating with an 80,000-channel 508XT land acquisition system, complete with QuietSeis digital sensors, and ten Nomad 90 Neo broadband vibrators in challenging desert terrain.

PGS enters node market with Barents Sea project

Ramform Hyperion will operate as a streamer vessel on the project.

PGS has been awarded a 3D survey

by Lundin Energy in the Barents Sea, where sparse node and high-density multi-sensor GeoStreamer seismic data will be acquired simultaneously.

The company will deploy dropnodes leased from Geospace Technologies and operate Ramform Hyperion as a streamer vessel and Sanco Swift as source vessel with an ultrawide source configuration. The survey polygon covers approx. 3600 km2, of which a subset will be covered with node seismic. The project will commence in late May 2021 with an anticipated duration of 75 days.

‘We have carefully watched the node market for many years and evaluated several entry points. We believe this opportunity will provide us with invaluable experience and insight to the node business,’ said Rune Olav Pedersen, president and CEO of PGS. Meanwhile, the company has completed imaging of a project in the Barents Sea that combined an ultrawide-tow penta source with a dense GeoStreamer spread and long tails.

‘The results show exceptional imaging of the near surface,’ said PGS. To examine the near-offset coverage, spatial sampling density, and

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broadband data-quality with wide-tow multi-sources. PGS employed a dense GeoStreamer spread and five sources with a total separation of 315 m.

‘The 3D volume proves the effectiveness of this acquisition setup, delivering high-resolution imaging of shallow targets and hazards, as well as excellent images of deeper geological structures and exploration targets,’ said PGS. Benefits include high resolution imaging of shallow targets and geohazards; uniform ultra-near-offset coverage; robust AVO for shallow targets; improved pre-processing, especially multiple removal (SRME); dense spatial-sampling and high-trace density.

The acquisition setup enabled dense spatial-sampling with a 6.25 m x 6.25 m bin size, high trace-density, and uniform coverage of the ultra-near offsets without the typical near-offset gaps at sail-line boundaries. Depth slices above are from 410 m and 468 m The data was acquired on the Loppa High in 2020 as an extension of multi-client survey PGS 20001 NBS. The full results will be available this summer.

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INDUSTRY NEWS

Rystad lists top global projects to benefit from subsea boosting Rystad Energy has identified more than 200 projects globally where subsea boosting pumps to intensify well flow could make an immediate impact by increasing production profitably.

Using its new Subsea Processing Screening Tool, Rystad said that the increase in recoverable reserves for the top 100 projects averaged 61 million barrels of oil per project. For every extra barrel of oil produced due to subsea boosting, operators can expect a profit of $11.30 on average.

The average investment cost to apply the subsea boosting solution for the 100 projects is about $475 million. Nearly 50 of the identified candidate projects are in the US. The other countries in the top 10 list are Brazil, Angola, Norway, the UK, Guyana, Nigeria, Ghana, Malaysia and Suriname.

The 10 companies that operate most of these projects identified by Rystad Energy are Petrobras, ExxonMobil, Shell, Equinor, BP, Chevron, Eni, LLOG, Murphy Oil and Apache.

Framo Engineering (now OneSubsea) installed the first subsea booster pump on Shell’s Draugen platform off Norway in 1993 but since then only another 50 projects have installed boosting equipment worldwide.

‘Subsea boosting offers significant value creation, both for brownfield and greenfield developments, by reducing the wellhead backpressure at the seabed, which in turn accelerates production and increases total recoverable resources,’ said Erik Vinje, an analyst with Rystad Energy.

Eni gets funding for first UK carbon capture project Eni has announced that the HyNet North West carbon capture project has received £33 million in funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The funding covers around 50% of the investment necessary to finalize planning studies

Palazzo Eni, Italian company’s Rome headquarters.

with the aim of making the first carbon capture and storage (CCS) infrastructure in the UK operational by 2025.

Alongside Eni, the HyNet North West project in the north west of England is being led by a consortium of local industrial companies. The site intends to capture, transport and store carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from existing industries and from future production sites for blue hydrogen, as an alternative fuel for heating, electricity generation and transport.

Eni will transport and store the CO2 in its depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs, located at around 18 miles offshore in Liverpool Bay, for which the company was awarded a carbon storage licence by the UK Oil & Gas Authority (OGA) in October 2020.

Once operational, the project will help to reduce CO2 emissions by up to 10 million tonnes every year by 2030, delivering 80% of the government’s new UK-wide target of 5GW of low carbon hydrogen.

Meanwhile, Eni and CDP Equity have set up GreenIT to develop, build and manage plants for the production of electrical power from renewable sources in Italy.

GreenIT, 51% owned by Eni and 49% by CDP Equity, will produce energy mainly from photovoltaic and wind power plants with the aim of reaching an installed capacity of approximately 1000 MW by 2025, with cumulative investments amounting to more than 800 million euro ($950 million) in the five-year period.

ION appoints BGP director to its board ION Geophysical has elected Zhang ShaoHua of BGP to its board of directors.

Under an investor rights agreement between the companies, BGP has the right to appoint a nominee to the company’s board of directors. Zhang’s appointment came as his predecessor on the ION board, Zheng HuaSheng, transferred to another China National Petroleum Corporation company.

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Zhang is currently general manager of BGP, the world’s largest land seismic contractor. He began his career at BGP and over 30 years has led the acquisition technical department, science and technology department, and finally the R&D Centre. In 2018, he was promoted to chief geophysicist of BGP. Zhang holds a master’s degree in geophysical prospecting from Changchun Col2021

lege of Geology (presently Jilin University) and a master’s in business administration degree from the University of South Alabama.

‘His technical expertise will prove particularly beneficial as we continue to develop new offerings to capitalize on the energy transition and digitalization opportunities that optimize decision-making and value for clients,’ said ION in a statement.

INDUSTRY NEWS

Aker Horizons becomes big player in clean hydrogen

Greenfield hydrogen facility, Rjukan, Norway.

Aker Horizons has launched Aker Clean Hydrogen, a pure-play industrial clean hydrogen producer to serve the global market.

The company has a portfolio of nine clean hydrogen projects and prospects with a total net capacity of 1.3 GW under development, and additional pipeline and opportunities of 4.7 GW. The company aims to reach a net installed capacity of 5 GW and to remove more than 9 million tonnes of CO2 a year by 2030.

The portfolio includes the recently announced partnership with Norway’s Yara and Statkraft to establish Europe’s first industrial-scale green ammonia project in Norway, the 450 MW Herøya plant.

The project has potential to remove about 800,000 tonnes of annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, one of the largest climate initiatives in Norwegian industrial

BRIEFS

history. The partnership also forms the basis for what could become a new green export industry by producing emission-free ammonia for CO2-intensive industries, including green fertilizer for the agriculture industry and emission-free shipping.

Additional portfolio projects include a new green ammonia facility in Berlevåg for decarbonizing Arctic shipping and off-grid power production, where conversion of the coal-fired power plant in Longyearbyen could be one of the first targets by 2025.

Green hydrogen production in Rjukan will enable emissions-free ferry and shipping transportation to be developed jointly in southern Norway.

Aker Horizons and Greenstat are looking at opportunities in Glomfjord and Meråker, Norway, and a strategic initiative in India.

The company is collaborating with Mainstream Renewable Power to develop production in Chile with a significant export potential.

It is also developing a green ammonia facility in Uruguay to enable emission-free shipping in Antarctica.

Aker Clean Hydrogen, which aims to enable hydrogen production at $1.5 per Kg by the end of this decade, is preparing for a listing on Euronext Growth.

PGS bolsters its offshore Canada library PGS has added 8500 km2 to its offshore Newfoundland and Labrador data library with three new GeoStreamer programmes: South Bank, Blomidon, and the Torngat Extension. Final PSTM products are now available from all three surveys.

In Eastern Newfoundland PGS has acquired the 3526 km2 Blomidon 3D survey which covers Tertiary and Cretaceous leads on open acreage for upcoming Eastern Newfoundland licensing.

In South-Eastern Newfoundland the company has acquired the 2635 km2 South Bank 3D survey providing the first 3D

data in an area with a huge Tertiary fan system. Open acreage will be included in the first South-Eastern Newfoundland call for bids, closing in November 2021.

In South Labrador it has acquired the 2050 km Torngat Extension survey, providing 3D data that builds on the existing Torngat 3D survey, over potential oil-prone acreage that is part of the South Labrador call for bids closing in November 2021.

‘This data will help exploration teams to derisk and better understand the areas for upcoming bid rounds,’ said Sriram Arasanipalai, Canada area manager at PGS. FIRST

EMGS has won a 3D CSEM contract in Southeast Asia with a first-time customer.

The acquisition will take place at the beginning of Q3, 2021.The contract value is between $6 and 7 million. The vessel Atlantic Guardian will acquire the survey after completing a multi-client acquisition offshore Mexico. This will necessitate a rescheduling of the previously announced prefunded Utsira High multi-client survey in Norway until early Q4 2021.

Data and software provider Getech has issued new shares, raising more than £6 million ($8.3 million) to invest in the hydrogen, mining and geothermal sectors.

Lundin has found oil about 15 km south of the Edvard Grieg field in the central part of the North Sea and 190 km west of Stavanger. The entire reservoir, including the water zone, consists of conglomeratic sandstones and in a thickness of about 380 m.

SeaBird Exploration has signed a contract for provision of source vessel services for an OBN survey in the Eastern Hemisphere.

The 90-day survey is scheduled to start in Q2 2021.

Magseis Fairfield has been awarded an ocean bottom node survey in the Gulf of Mexico for a multi-client company.

The duration of the survey is approx. 4 months and will be executed in 2021 using the company’s ZXPLR deepwater ocean bottom node technology.

The UK has announced more than £30 million of government funding towards the Acorn carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in Scotland.

Germany and Canada have agreed to explore the joint development of green hydrogen from Canadian hydroelectric power for export to Germany.

Total and Microsoft have agreed to collaborate on achieving net-zero emissions.

Total will leverage the cloud platforms of Microsoft and Azure software.

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INDUSTRY NEWS

Equinor wins funding for three projects in UK net zero industrial cluster All three of Equinor’s projects to deliver deep cuts in emissions from industries in the north-east of England have received public funding from UK authorities.

Equinor and its partners will now progress these projects in order to create the world’s first net zero industrial cluster by 2040.

Firstly, the UK government announced funding for Zero Carbon Humber (ZCH), a 12-company partnership to turn the UK’s largest industrial cluster net zero through deployment of low carbon hydrogen, carbon capture and negative emissions delivered at sites across the Humber estuary. The first project is the Equinor-led H2H Saltend low carbon hydrogen facility and a hydrogen and carbon dioxide (CO2) pipeline network across Humber industrial sites developed by National Grid The second project is Net Zero Teesside (NZT), a five-company partnership to decarbonize the Teesside industrial cluster with carbon capture and build a new gasfired power station with state-of-the art carbon capture technology.

The third project is the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP), a six-company partnership (with ENI, National

Grid, Shell, Total and operator BP) to develop offshore carbon dioxide transport and storage infrastructure in the UK North Sea that will serve both ZCH and NZT. The three successful bids amount to £229 million (£314 million) in private and public funding, with Equinor and its partners contributing more than two-thirds of the total.

The funding will be used in each project to move through the detailed

engineering and design stages and progress to the point where a final investment decision (FID) on each can be taken.

‘The Humber and Teesside make up nearly half of the UK’s industrial emissions so, to reach net zero, there is enormous value in tackling emissions at both clusters together,’ said Grete Tveit, senior vice president for low carbon solutions in Equinor.

Three projects cover areas that cover nearly half the UK’s industrial emissions.

BP publishes plans for big blue hydrogen plant in the UK BP has unveiled plans for the UK’s largest blue hydrogen production facility, targeting 1GW of hydrogen production by 2030. The H2 Teeside project in the country’s industrial hub in the north east of England would also capture and send for storage up to two million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year.

A final investment decision on the project, which is close to North Sea storage sites, pipe corridors and existing operational hydrogen storage and distribution capabilities, is expected in 2024. Production could start in 2027 or earlier. BP has begun a feasibility study into the project to explore technologies that could capture up to 98% of carbon emissions from the hydrogen production process.

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With large-scale, low-cost production of clean hydrogen, BP said that H2Teesside could support the conversion of surrounding industries to use hydrogen in place of natural gas, playing an important role in decarbonizing a cluster of industries in Teesside.

H2Teesside would be integrated with the region’s already-planned Net Zero Teesside (NZT) and Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) carbon capture use and storage (CCUS) projects, both of which are led by BP as operator.

The project is expected to be developed in stages, with an initial 500MW of blue hydrogen capacity in production by 2027 or earlier and additional capacity to be deployed by 2030 as decarbonization of the industrial cluster and hydrogen demand gathers pace.

2021

BP has agreed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Venator, one of the largest global producers of titanium dioxide pigments and performance additives, to scope the supply of clean hydrogen to its flagship Teesside plant.

It has also agreed an MoU with Northern Gas Networks (NGN), the gas distributor for the North of England, to collaborate on further decarbonizing both industrial customers and residential homes throughout its gas network.

Separately, BP has also signed an MoU with Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) to explore the potential for green hydrogen in the region, including the development of Teesside as the UK’s first hydrogen transport hub.

Special Topic

GLOBAL EXPLORATION HOTSPOTS

Explorers have a pretty good idea of where global exploration hotspots are but excellent multi-disciplinary geoscience strategies are required to identity the sweetspots. This month we focus on some of these emerging strategies. We also look at how the exploration picture is evolving as a result of the energy transition and the advent of deep-sea mining for the minerals essential to make the energy transition work. As the world emerges from the Covid pandemic and oil prices rise, hotspots are waiting to be explored.

Rachael Harrison et al assess emerging plays and alternative petroleum systems in Mozambique revealed by multi-disciplinary data integration. They demonstrate how this approach can unlock plays beyond the limited stratigraphic and geographic sweet spots proven to date.

Neil Hodgson et al set out an era of hotspots born from new ideas, data availability and discovery.

Matthew Plummer et al reveal the similarities between the Kwnza-Campos Conjugate Pair basins that can advance the identification of additional exploration potential on both sides of the South Atlantic.

Tiziana Luzzi et al give an overview of big exploration successes in 2020 and areas that will benefit from the higher oil price this year and where explorers will prioritise.

Adriana Citlali et al present multi-purpose high-resolution data to show that the Norwegian Atlantic Margin is a new hotspot for deep-sea minerals.

Mike Lakin looks at where the key hotspots of the future will be and whether they can be unlocked after a prolonged industry downturn, Covid and during the energy transition.

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

Unconventionals and Passive Seismic

May

Global Exploration Hotspots

June

Geoscience & Engineering in the Energy Transition

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

Digital Transformation in Geoscience

August

Near Surface Geo Mining

September

Reservoir Characterization

October

Delivering for the Energy Challenge: Today and Tomorrow

November

Marine Seismic & EM

December

Data Management and 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: WHATSUP!

Standardization in geoscience — long overdue or a killer of creativity?

Peter Rowbotham* considers standardization.

In all walks of life, imposing strict rules and regulations will lead to rule breaking. It is just human nature. Think of those tracks people make in parks as they cut across grass and avoid longer right-angle paths imposed by design or planning (‘desire paths’ an example from Edinburgh is shown below). The challenge for us in the workplace is how to lead adoption of better approaches without losing those from the path.

Those of us fortunate to have spent some time in geoscience will have experienced several episodes of management initiatives on the theme of standardization. ‘Why are we reinventing the wheel every time we process seismic data, map out a new prospect, drill a well? Shouldn’t our processes be more standardized, allowing us to more efficiently measure improvements?’

There is a collective shudder down the spines of teams in hearing such talk, with thoughts of production-line cookie-cutter projects leading to robotic thinking, lack of flexibility to address surprises, innovation stagnation, quality drop and ultimately redundancies. The advantages of standardization are less easy to accept as they impinge on our own self-worth. Accepting that a standardized way of working is more efficient implies that, left to our own devices, we are prone to wasting time and hobbying.

The pros of standardization are to capture the knowledge (expert systems) for future generations; with remote and global working, standards help to structure change; demonstrate value to customers; reduce mistakes or the requirement for reworking through checklists; and improve control of project management (cost, time, resources).

The cons of standardization are: unforeseen consequences – standards drive the way of working rather than vice versa; standardisation looks backwards and is not future proof; previous

attempts at standardization have failed through lack of buy-in, feature creep, over-ambitious reach and scope; standardization level in the organisation leads to incompatibility between departments; commercial incentives exist not to adopt standards, such as where pay is based on time worked rather than results.

The growth in Machine Learning (ML) is bringing standardization to our lives, and any rational scientist can see the advantages of ML to run the mundane, repeatable tasks of our jobs. More intriguing perhaps is when ML reveals new insights to us which were hiding in plain sight; we were just too busy to look. Where our concerns should lie is with the limited training data of ML algorithms. ML is adept at distinguishing cats from dogs, faulted seismic from unfaulted, but what it cannot do is think through what is missing. There exists the trap of the hermeneutical circle both for humans and machines, where data are interpreted within an existing world view, thus reinforcing it. We can all recall recent examples of where data were deemed outliers if they did not match perceived narrative.

So how to go about implementing standardization? Returning to desire paths: communicate the advantages to practitioners, either through carrot or stick; measure and adapt to new insights – “You’re right, let’s re-lay the path here and grass over the old ignored track” and celebrate successes – “Most improved parkland for biodiversity”.

And how will we know when we have achieved a successful standardisation process? Ask the team whether their job satisfaction has improved, especially those that were most sceptical at the start of the journey.

Views expressed in Whatsup are solely those of the author, who can be contacted at peter.rowbotham@apachecorp.com

“Desire Paths” in Holyrood Park, Edinburgh.

*

Peter Rowbotham is chairman of the editorial board of First Break.

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CALENDAR

CALENDAR OF EVENTS 24-28 MAY

Horizontal Wells 2021

Astrakhan, Russia and online www.eage.org

May 2021 6-7 May

First EAGE/VAPA Online Forum: Venezuela’s Upstream to Downstream Past, Present and Future www.eage.org

Online

7‑8 May

ISZA 2021 www.isza.hu

Zalakaros

17 May

Seismic 2021 www.spe-aberdeen.org/events/seismic-2021

Online

24‑28 May

Horizontal Wells 2021 www.eage.org

Astrakhan and online

26-28 May

First EAGE Digital Subsurface Conference in Latin America www.eage.org

Online

4‑9 Jul

Goldschmidt 2021

Lyon and online

France

27-29 Jul

First EAGE Guyana-Suriname Basin Conference www.eage.org

Georgetown and online

Guyana

Hungary

Russia

July 2021

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August 2021 4-6 Aug

Data Science in Oil and Gas 2021 www.eage.ru

Novosibirsk and Online

Russia

19‑20 Aug

First EAGE Workshop on Geothermal Energy in Latin America www.eage.org

Guanacaste and Online

Costa Rica

24‑25 Aug

First EAGE Workshop on Faults in Groundwater, CO2 and Hydrocarbons in Asia Pacific www.eage.org

Online

29 Aug ‑ 2 Sep

Near Surface Geoscience Conference & Exhibition 2021 www.nsg2021.org

Bordeaux

France

September 2021 6‑7 Sep

EAGE Workshop on Computational Sciences for New Energy and Oil Recovery www.eage.org

Kuala Lumpur and Online

Malaysia

6‑8 Sep

Fifth EAGE Workshop on High Performance Computing for Upstream www.eage.org

Milan and online

Italy

6‑10 Sep

Geomodel 2021 23 rd conference on oil and gas geological exploration and development www.eage.org

Gelendzhik

Russia

8-10 Sep

Second EAGE Conference on Pre-Salt Reservoir www.eage.org

Rio de Janeiro and Online

Brazil

12-17 Sep

30 th International Meeting on Organic Geochemistry (IMOG 2021) www.imog2021.org

Montpellier and online

France

14 Sep

Asia Energy Forum - The Role of Geoscience Through the Energy Transition www.eage.org

Online

27‑29 Sep

Fourth EAGE Borehole Geology Workshop www.eage.org

Online

October 2021 4‑6 Oct

Third HGS/EAGE Conference on Latin America www.eage.org

Houston and online

United States

4‑7 Oct

14th Middle East Geosciences Conference & Exhibition (GEO2021) www.geo-expo.com

Manama

Bahrain

5‑7 Oct

EAGE Workshop on Hydrocarbon Potential of the Far East 2021 www.eage.org

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and online

Russia

10-14 Oct

BGS Congress 2021 https://bgscongress.org

Bucharest

Romania

11‑12 Oct

EAGE Conference on Seismic Interpretation using AI Methods - Going Beyond Machine Learning www.eage.org

Online

18 Oct

Third Young Professionals Summit yp-summit.org

Amsterdam

Netherlands

18-21 Oct

82 nd EAGE Conference & Exhibition www.eageannual2021.org

Amsterdam and online

Netherlands

25‑27 Oct

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

Merida

Mexico

EAGE Events

Non-EAGE Events

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