Finding Oil Is Really Hard, Making Money Even Harder pubs.spe.org/en/jpt/jpt-art… | “In retrospect it wasn’t obvious, and that was why it took so long,”
......“initiated oil and gas exploration activities in Guyana in 2008,” the story ExxonMobil presented at the recent AAPG SuperBasins 2020 conference covered exploration starts and stops going back to 1928 by the company’s predecessor, Standard Oil Co."
"One slide showed a typewritten report from the 1930s noting the test wells were “salted,” giving the impression of a rich reservoir, even though “there is no evidence of oil.”
"But ExxonMobil and other oil companies kept coming back."
"There were dry holes in the 1970s off nearby Suriname—the eastern extension of the play. They saw some positive signs, but the source rock was judged to be not mature enough to fill the conventional oil deposits needed to justify development."
"Finally, in the 1990s ExxonMobil geoscientists looking for new exploration opportunities used what had been learned, plus advanced seismic imaging,.........
........a better understanding of the movements of tectonic plates, and some simple analysis to outline a plan that ultimately led to the discovery."
"Guedez showed a picture of a simple chart evaluating the pros and cons of the basin with handwritten notes, and a geologic cross section in which a geologist hand-counted layers in shallow and deep waters to identify the elements of a productive play."
“New data and technologies often trigger key insights, but you need to ask the right questions,”
“Sometimes you don’t need massive amounts of data to make a difference.”
“Sometimes you don’t need massive amounts of data to make a difference.”
"Executing the concept required developing the ability to drill wells in water 8,000 ft deep and high resolution to seismic that allowed interpreters to see the subtle signs of hydrocarbon-rich stratigraphic traps."
"Guyana and Suriname are at the top of the list of the hottest exploration plays. Robert Fryklund, vice president and chief upstream strategist for IHS Markit, predicts reserves will reach 10–12 billion BOE—off Guyana, as ExxonMobil and others continue to drill."
"Just to the west is Venezuela, which is home to multiple super basins. Oil companies are chasing far smaller targets off Guyana because Venezuela is lacking critical ingredients needed to facilitate development."
"It has shut out international oil companies, and the economy is in such a state of disarray that the national oil company is struggling to continue producing oil, much less look for more."
"Still, Venezuela’s potential is dumbfounding. Potential resource estimates of its super basins are often in the tens of billions, including deepwater plays and an area with an estimated 67 billion bbl in hydrocarbons in the ground that has hardly been drilled"
"Other countries are willing but not able to attract interest from an industry which is not in a rush to go hunting internationally for oil. Chastened by investors who demand profits over growth, the industry in general is cautious."
"Some operators are betting big on unconventional production and are focused on finding a way to generate significant profits from it."
“Ten years ago, how we do exploration changed—some of that is due to unconventionals, but a lot of it was the challenge of what should exploration be doing,” Fryklund said.
"As a result, Hess, which is an ExxonMobil partner in Guyana, shrunk its global operations to the US Gulf of Mexico, the Bakken, and Guyana."
