VOL. 18, NO. 3 – 2021 GEOSCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EXPLAINED ENERGY TRANSITION Geothermal Energy NEW TECHNOLOGY Wild Roving with Percy EXPLORATION Unconventionals in Mexico RECENT ADVANCES IN TECHNOLOGY Robots on the Seabed GEOPHYSICS Seabed Mineral Exploration geoexpro.com GEOExPro June 2021 1 Previous issues: www.geoexpro.com Contents Vol. 18 No. 3 This issue of GEO ExPro focuses on Europe; GEOSCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EXPLAINED Robotics and Automation; Unconventional Resources and the Energy Transition. 14 5 Editorial Mexico’s Tampico-Misantla Basin is potentially one 6 Regional Update: Private Equity Firms Google Earth 2021 of the richest unconventional oil and gas resources in Drive UK Oil and Gas Activity the world and development of these resources could 8 Licensing Update: Angola’s ANPG significantly increase Mexico´s oil and gas production, bringing sufficient income to rejuvenate the national oil Promotes Onshore Exploration company and help get the Mexican economy back on 10 A Minute to Read its feet. 14 Exploration: Unconventionals in Lon Abbott/Terri Cook Mexico 20 Seismic Foldout: Multi-Azimuth Dataset Delivers Accurate Lead 48 Dalmatia, the famously beautiful Characterisation, South Viking Graben, and rugged coastline stretching Norway. between Montenegro’s Bay of Kotor north to Croatia’s Rab island. It, like 26 Cover Story: Wild Roving with Percy the French Riviera, is a destination made to savour on a bike tour, on 30 Energy Transition Update: A Difficult foot, or in a convertible with the top Transition down. 32 Geophysics: Seabed Mineral Exploration 36 Hot Spot: Australia’s Beetaloo Shale Play - A Rival to the North American 52 Marcellus Play? Oil was first exploited commercially in Romania in 1857 and, since 38 New Technology: Robots on the then, the industry has seen cycles Seabed of boom and bust, prosperity and decline. Romanians have a proud 42 Seismic Foldout: UK Continental Shelf - technological and geological record An Evolution in 3D Seismic Imaging of in the oil industry, but international rivalry brought a troubled narrative the Central North Sea to the story of their land. ETH - Zurich 48 GEO Tourism: Dalmatia – Where Karst Meets Coast 52 History of Oil: The Winning of 74 CGG Romanian Oil Like oil and gas reservoirs, there 56 Exploration: The West of Shetland are many different geothermal play types, yet there remain some Petroleum System constant geological factors that 60 Exploration: UK Onshore Palaeozoic must be understood and oil and gas explorationists will find their skills 64 Seismic Foldout: What Does It Mean are very transferable to this energy When Bottom Simulating Reflectors source. Are Black Swans? 70 New Technology: Microbial Magic 20 56 74 Energy Transition: Geothermal Energy 6 42 74 78 Exploration Update 10 52 48 80 GEO Media: STRATA – William Smith’s 82 10 14 30 30 Geological Maps 78 8 78 82 Q&A: Susan Nash: Unconventionals in 64 64 the US – What Next? 78 36 84 FlowBack: Making a Date with the Data GEOExPro June 2021 3 Editorial Are Friends Electric? GEOSCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EXPLAINED Upstream exploration requires www.geoexpro.com the utilisation and adaptation of diff erent technologies distributed Shutterstock GeoPublishing Ltd over numerous scientifi c and 15 Palace Place Mansion engineering disciplines. As the cost Kensington Court London W8 5BB, UK of exploration and exploitation + 44 (0) 7909 915513 of resources rises, more effi cient ways of working become more Managing Director and more critical. Automation Tore Karlsson is an area of rapid development Editor in Chief in many industries; if you have Iain Brown seen the YouTube videos of order [email protected] A drone, monitoring oil refi nery. picking robots in Amazon’s ‘smart’ Editorial enquiries warehouses, you can understand how impressive and disruptive these types of technologies can GeoPublishing Iain Brown be. In the off shore energy industries, we are seeing similar innovations with highly automated systems in marine seismic acquisition and the potential advent of fully autonomous robotic +44 (0) 7767 770265 ocean bottom node systems as well as inspection robots on off shore facilities. [email protected] Robotics is not limited to planet Earth, as is dramatically illustrated by the incredible, www.geoexpro.com successful delivery of NASA’s Perseverance rover to the 45 km-wide Jezero impact crater. Not Sales and Marketing Director only did ‘Percy’ arrive unscathed after its 480 million kilometre journey, but it was delivered Kirsti Karlsson to the surface of the red planet by its personal, jet-powered delivery system – all remotely and + 44 (0) 7909 915513 pre-programmed. It also carried a passenger called Ingenuity, a small coaxial, drone rotorcraft [email protected] whose individual mission will be to help guide Percy on its onward journey through Jezero. Already successfully tested, it will have the potential to scout locations of interest and support the future planning of driving routes for future Mars rovers. Remote satellite monitoring, coupled with machine learning and high-performance Subscription GeoPublishing Ltd computing, is allowing a range of industries to strengthen situational awareness of the impact + 44 (0) 7909 915513 of off shore assets, coastal facilities, and vessel activity on the natural marine environment. As 15 Palace Place Mansion well as gas fl aring, early detection of anomalous events and third-party pollution incidents, Kensington Court and surveillance of natural seeps are all becoming more common as the number of satellites London W8 5BB, UK [email protected] available for commercial use increases. Closer to home, automation will be a key driver in the technologies deployed for seabed GEO ExPro is pub lished bimonthly mining – if this ever becomes a reality. Our article on seabed mineral for a base subscrip tion rate of GBP exploration suggests that some of the reconnaissance phases of exploration 60 a year (6 issues). could be undertaken using autonomous underwater vehicles equipped We encourage readers to alert us to news for possible publication with a range of sensors capable of collecting multiple datasets in a single and to submit articles for publication. dive. Th ese would augment the use of wide-tow sources and variable multisensor streamer geometries. Geophysical technology, modifi ed for Cover Photograph: studying the shallow subsurface and deployed from effi cient autonomous Main Image: Shutterstock Inset: CGG platforms, has the potential to provide information to make better Iain Brown environmental decisions and to guide responsible exploitation of marine Layout: Mach 3 Solutions Ltd Editor in Chief mineral resources. Print: Stephens & George, UK issn 1744-8743 WILD ROVING WITH PERCY Undoubtedly the most advanced example of automation and robotics engineered by humans, Perseverance (Percy), the NASA Mars rover has started its epic mission to search for extra-terrestrial life. The quest will be guided by geology, making Percy the fi rst robotic geologist to operate off -world. Inset: A 3D structural model of the Upper Rhine Graben, built from interpreted seismic volumes to help inform well planning for geothermal energy. © 2021 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 June 2021 5 Regional Update Private Equity Firms Drive UK Oil ABBREVIATIONS and Gas Activity Numbers (US and scientific community) Since the first hydrocarbons were produced on the UK Continental Shelf at BP’s West M: thousand = 1 x 103 Sole gas field in 1967, there have been many prophecies of when production from the MM: million = 1 x 106 province would eventually end. To use that well-known phrase from the oil industry, B: billion = 1 x 109 ‘it is a hydrocarbon province that keeps on giving’. T: trillion = 1 x 1012 With such prolific source rocks, notably in the Jurassic and Carboniferous, we can expect more surprises in the offshore basins. The industry can also expect many oil and gas fields will outlast their prognosed depletion dates and be the subject of re- Liquids development in the future. barrel = bbl = 159 litre Despite a drop in new exploration and appraisal drilling in the UK offshore sector, boe: barrels of oil equivalent the industry remains very buoyant compared to other parts of the world. Bid rounds bopd: barrels (bbls) of oil per day bcpd: bbls of condensate per day continue to be healthy with new block awards, and we also see robust deal flow. bwpd: bbls of water per day London itself has taken over from Houston as the global hub for international oil and stoiip: stock-tank oil initially in gas deals. place The figure below shows the number of contract areas which have been the subject of a transaction between 2016 to 2020. The UK has been the most active place in the world outside of North America with 2018 and 2020 being the busiest years in the UK. Gas Much of this has been driven by Private Equity (PE) involvement which started its MMscfg: million ft3 gas 3 drumfire in 2015. MMscmg: million m gas Tcfg: trillion cubic feet of gas Ma: Million years ago LNG Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) is natural gas (primarily methane) cooled to a temperature of approximately -260 oC.