GEO Expro Magazine Vol. 17, No. 1
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VOL. 17, NO. 1 – 2020 GEOSCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EXPLAINED geoexpro.com HISTORY OF OIL TECHNOLOGY EXPLAINED The Land That Oil Forgot Pangea III: At the Heart of E&P GEOTOURISM Oman’s Musandam Peninsula RESERVOIR MANAGEMENT Salt Biostratigraphy INDUSTRY ISSUES Teaching the Machines Previous issues: www.geoexpro.com Contents Vol. 17 No. 1 This edition of GEO ExPro focuses on the GEOSCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EXPLAINED Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean; Digitalisation and Artifi cial Intelligence; and Reservoir Management. 22 The Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah 5 Editorial is relatively underexplored and off ers plenty of potential. 6 Regional Update: Egypt - A New Regional Hub? 8 Licensing Update: Timor-Leste 10 A Minute to Read 26 14 Cover Story: Industry Issues: Machine learning combined with Pangea III: At the Heart of E&P knowledge gleaned from experts can be used to rapidly assess hydrocarbon Kognitus 18 Industry Issues: Teaching the Machines risks. 22 Country Profi le: Ras Al Khaimah – Great Hydrocarbon Potential 26 Reservoir Management: AI and Petroleum System Risk Assessment AAPG 30 Hot Spot: Empires of Gas in the Eastern 32 Mediterranean Distinguished explorationist Bernard Duval advises young 32 GEO Profi le: Bernard Duval – Vive geoscientists to “study, read, L’Aventure! attend technical society meetings, network − but also to 36 Seismic Foldout: Maximus Survey: get out in the fi eld and have fun!” Opportunities in Deepwater Gulf of Mexico 46 Confused by the range of climate 42 Recent Advances in Technology: From scenarios? Free online interactive Arrhenius to CO2 Storage – Part VI calculators can help make understanding the complexities of the 46 Industry Issues: Comprehending David Mark/Pixabay climate crisis a bit easier. Climate Complexities 50 GEO Tourism: Oman’s Musandam Peninsula – Geodynamic and Geopolitical Nexus 56 Reservoir Management: 66 Revolutionising the Prediction of Distinguished geologist Professor Ken Glennie’s work on desert Reservoir Performance sedimentary systems was hugely infl uential in early North Sea 58 History of Oil: The Land That Oil Forgot exploration. – Palestine, 1913–1948 62 Reservoir Management: Salt Biostratigraphy – An Untapped Source 11 12 10 11 of Data? 13 30 66 Obituary: Ken Glennie − The Passing of 6 58 22 36 68 50 a Legend 10 72 68 Exploration Update 68 8 68 70 Q&A: The Saudi Aramco IPO 72 FlowBack: The Africa Factor GEOExPro March 2020 3 Editorial A Hot Topic GEOSCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EXPLAINED Digitalisation, artifi cial www.geoexpro.com intelligence and machine learning; it is a hot topic. GeoPublishing Ltd Everyone across the world, 15 Palace Place Mansion including in the oil and gas Kensington Court London W8 5BB, UK industry, is talking about it, +44 20 7937 2224 although it could be admitted that in some ways we were a Managing Director little bit slow to join the party. Tore Karlsson Leo ViktorLeo Wolfert/123rf.com Why is this so important? Editor in Chief Money is, as ever, a prime Jane Whaley mover; according to a 2018 Wood MacKenzie report, the adoption of digitisation and machine [email protected] learning technologies could result in cost savings in the order of $75 billion in the upstream Editorial enquiries sector alone by 2023. Th ese are likely to come from things like speedier drilling, fewer dry GeoPublishing holes, more automation in production and the ability to undertake predictive maintenance. Jane Whaley Th ere are also benefi ts in health and safety, as fewer workers are required to work in +44 7812 137161 dangerous wellsite situations. [email protected] Th e technologies involved have developed rapidly in the last couple of years, and their www.geoexpro.com adoption by O&G is increasing at a very fast rate. At conferences and meetings, presentations Sales and Marketing Director on the subject of digitalisation and AI have moved in a very short space of time from simply Kirsti Karlsson explaining the concepts and how they could help the industry, to giving practical examples +44 79 0991 5513 and case histories of the time- and cost-savings of applying these technologies. Ideas that [email protected] barely a year or so ago were presented as new and innovative, such as using machine learning to rapidly update reservoir models in real-time, are becoming mainstream, as discussed in a couple of articles in this issue. Interestingly, there are newcomers among the ‘usual suspects’ of oil and service company Subscription people giving talks at these conferences and seminars; the likes of Amazon, Google and GeoPublishing Ltd Microsoft are now commonly sending delegates and speakers to address this industry, which +44 20 7937 2224 they see as ripe for further digitisation and ready for the disruption − to 15 Palace Place Mansion use that popular buzzword − that this will inevitably bring. Kensington Court London W8 5BB, UK As the use of digitalisation and artifi cial intelligence moves more [email protected] mainstream it becomes accessible to a greater number of people and to a larger range of companies, possibly allowing small start-ups to leapfrog GEO EXPro is pub lished bimonthly slower moving established organisations. In the always volatile oil for a base subscrip tion rate of GBP 60 a year (6 issues). industry, fl exible, fast-moving companies that embrace this trend, using We encourage readers to alert us their data as an asset to be mined and learnt from, will ultimately be the to news for possible publication Jane Whaley successful ones. and to submit articles for publication. Editor in Chief Cover Photograph: Main Image: Laurent Pascal Inset: Matson Collection, Library of Congress Layout: Mach 3 Solutions Ltd PANGEA III: AT THE HEART OF E&P Print: Stephens & George, UK Total’s upgraded Pangea supercomputer delivers unprecedented computing power to help the company more reliably locate hydrocarbons, issn 1744-8743 enhances mathematical modelling and visualisation and improves the management of uncertainties, to provide a better vision and understanding of the subsurface. Inset: “The one spot in the Middle East that has no oil”: a look at the history of exploration in Palestine from 1913 to 1948. © 2020 GeoPublishing Limited. Copyright or similar rights in all material in this publication, including graphics and other media, is owned by GeoPublishing Limited, unless otherwise stated. You are allowed to print extracts for your personal use only. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photographic, recorded or otherwise without the prior written permission of GeoPublishing Limited. Requests to republish material from this publication for distribution should be sent to the Editor in Chief. GeoPublishing Limited does not guarantee the accuracy of the information contained in this publication nor does it accept responsibility for errors or omissions or their consequences. Opinions expressed by contributors to this publication are not necessarily those of GeoPublishing Limited. GEOExPro March 2020 5 Regional Update Egypt: A New Regional Hub? ABBREVIATIONS Egypt is in the middle of a supply turnaround. Th e gas-rich country became a net importer of LNG in 2015 after domestic production failed to keep up with LNG Numbers (US and scientifi c community) supply commitments; however, the country announced its intention to cease imports M: thousand = 1 x 103 and begin exporting LNG through its main LNG terminal at Damietta in 2020. MM: million = 1 x 106 Th e volumes to support this restart will come from the surplus gas production B: billion = 1 x 109 of about 550 MMcfpd at the giant Zohr fi eld, where production reached 2.7 Bcfpd T: trillion = 1 x 1012 at the end of 2019. Supply to the three LNG trains in Egypt − Shell-operated Idku T1 and T2 and Eni-Damietta T1 − will produce 1.42 million tons a year in 2020. Liquids Th e uptick occurred after Shell and the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation barrel = bbl = 159 litre (EGPC) renegotiated the contracts for the Burullus and Rosetta fi elds. In addition boe: barrels of oil equivalent to these volumes, West Nile Delta, Nooros, Atoll and Baltim South West will all be bopd: barrels (bbls) of oil per day major contributors to this ramp up. bcpd: bbls of condensate per day bwpd: bbls of water per day Earlier, Cyprus received permission from the EU to construct a subsea pipeline to Idku in Egypt to target growing demand in international gas markets. In Israel, Gas Noble Energy signed a long-term contract in September 2018 with Dolphinus MMscfg: million ft3 gas 3 Holdings, an Egyptian consortium, to sell 64 Bm of gas over a 10-year period from MMscmg: million m3 gas Tamar and Leviathan into the Egyptian domestic market through the existing East Tcfg: trillion cubic feet of gas Mediterranean Gas pipeline. With in-place export infrastructure and growing domestic demand, Egypt is well positioned to serve as a gas export hub for the region. Ma: Million years ago 3 Egypt’s gas supply and demand balance (Bm ) LNG Rystad Energy Upstream Analytics Liquifi ed Natural Gas (LNG) is natural gas (primarily methane) cooled to a temperature of approximately -260 oC. NGL Natural gas liquids (NGL) include propane, butane, pentane, hexane and heptane, but not methane and ethane. Reserves and resources P1 reserves: Quantity of hydrocarbons believed Egypt’s hydrocarbon production is set to rise to about 2.2 MMboepd in 2020, recoverable with a 90% probability thanks to supply additions from Baltim South West and Zohr. With this, Egypt will have brought most of the resources discovered to date online. Further ramping P2 reserves: up and maintaining production levels will be contingent upon future discoveries. Quantity of hydrocarbons believed In the recent past, Egypt has awarded relatively unexplored blocks to majors, so recoverable with a 50% probability success or otherwise on these has potential to change the production outlook.