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Nothing is more difficult than the art of maneuvering for advantageous positions.
Sun-Tzu
Chinese general & military strategist (~400 BC)
As we approach the end of 2009, what can we say about the shape and health of global exploration?
Firstly, I believe that we can observe that innovation, the exercise of “Know How”, the smart application of technology, are all alive and kicking in the world of exploration and there have been some noticeable successes, for example:
- In the Balmer Basin of Rajasthan
- In the Lower Tertiary of the Deep Water Gulf of Mexico
- In the Albertine Basin of Uganda
- In the sub-salt of the Santos Basin, Brasil
- In Deep Water Angola
- In the Jurassic of the southern end of the West Siberia Basin
- Chasing unconventional gas onshore in the USA
- Along the West Africa Transform Margin, especially Ghana.
Secondly, we should admit that this list slides off the keyboard too easily and disguises the fact that exploration is getting harder and harder compared with the ‘easy days’ of the second half of the 1990’s when the advent of regional marine 3D allowed us to explore young-ish Tertiary deep water clastics with comparative ease.
Consider for example what was involved in the recent Tiber discovery in the Lower Tertiary of the Deep Water Gulf of Mexico:
- To begin with, there was the imagination; the imagination to perceive that there would be a thick pile of slope and basin floor fans fully 400kms from the Lower Willcox shelf edge
- Then there was the “Know How”; the “Know How” to figure out after the first handful of discoveries where the porosity and permeability ‘sweet-spot’ might be
- And then there’s the technology; the technology to drill the small matter of 35,000 feet or so.
A fantastic achievement, don’t you think!
Thirdly, an interesting sub-plot is the relative failure of the Majors as a whole to participate at the tough frontiers of exploration and their possible replacement at the ‘cutting edge’ by the likes of Petrobras & BG, Cairn Energy, Tullow Oil, Anadarko Petroleum, and a host of small companies in the USA.
This is a topic worth its own article but what we I want to…
