Finding Petroleum

Pushing the boundaries to find petroleum

All Blog Posts (49)

Search Blog Posts

David Bamford Collaborative Technologies

To pursue a theme I have mentioned before, I have been on many team-building courses in my career but have noticed that teamwork in our industry – where there are many distinct disciplines that must contribute to an exploration venture, a field development project, a ‘debottlenecking’ exercise or a field resurrecti

… Continue

Added by David Bamford on February 21, 2010 at 5:16pm — 1 Comment

Andrew Zolnai This week's Forum on collaborative technologies

Please join me on my blog post here
"The Finding Petroleum (FP) January Conference at Inmarsat in London was the first topic on rebranding conferences. Yesterday's Forum on collaborative technologies at the Geological Society, London was a second type of offering. According… Continue

Added by Andrew Zolnai on February 18, 2010 at 10:31am — No Comments

David Bamford Drilling Performance

I spent an hour of the holidays scouring the dictionary for words that summarised my thoughts about the day rates that are currently being paid for deep water drilling rigs – ‘usury’, ‘exploitative’ came to mind. However, nobody reads these blogs of mine (of course that phrase itself may be true!) to be confronted

… Continue

Added by David Bamford on February 14, 2010 at 4:42pm — 1 Comment

David Bamford Onshore Seismic

As I mentioned in a previous blog, the cost of onshore seismic can be an order of magnitude more than that of offshore seismic. One of the reasons for this is that a typical onshore survey consists of thousands of geophones, connected in ‘groups’ by cable, with these ‘groups’ ultimately connected by cable to the re

… Continue

Added by David Bamford on February 9, 2010 at 7:58am — 6 Comments

David Bamford Full Tensor Gradient Gravimetry

Textbooks, MSc courses and proponents have long argued the case for potential field, i.e. gravity and magnetic, techniques as a reconnaissance oil & gas exploration tool, especially the air-borne versions. Unfortunately, I think it’s the experience of explorers that the promise is almost never fulfilled, the lack of resolution and the interpretation ambiguities not at all being compensated for by the cheapness (and what does magnetic susceptibility have to do with petroleum anyway!). Until… Continue

Added by David Bamford on January 24, 2010 at 7:41am — 1 Comment

David Bamford Focussing

Beginning in the mid 1990’s, the advent of regional or ‘exploration’ 3D, at extraordinarily low unit cost, enabled us to explore offshore in a very precise way; for example, the whole of the Angola Deep Water blocks 15, 16, 17 and 18 – an area of 20,000 sq kms plus – is swathed in such 3D, and this is direct enabler of the high exploration success rates enjoyed by ExxonMobil, Total and BP. We find ourselves presented with a different problem when exploring onshore. Consider for example East Sib… Continue

Added by David Bamford on January 17, 2010 at 1:29pm — No Comments

David Bamford Innovations in my past

Perhaps I ought to make it clear that I am interested in technology innovations and breakthroughs, not the sort of minor incremental improvement that comes from adding yet another attribute mapping function to a widely sold interpretation system, for example. In my humble opinion, such innovations and breakthroughs tend to come from smaller to medium sized, more entrepreneurial, companies, not from the ‘big battalions’. Let me describe a handful of experiences which lead me to this conclusion.… Continue

Added by David Bamford on January 11, 2010 at 2:02pm — No Comments

David Bamford Setting the scene

Finding Petroleum focuses on the “sweet spot” where Business, Exploration and Technology overlap. Over the next few weeks, I want to see if I can identify some key technology trends, and therefore potentially successful technology companies. My approach will be to look at business and exploration* trends to identify the key ‘pulls’ on technology; it seems important to think about the issue this way round – as opposed to identifying “wouldn’… Continue

Added by David Bamford on January 4, 2010 at 8:28am — 5 Comments

David Bamford Storing the Gas the UK Needs

Most industry pundits agree that, given current global consumption of just over 100Tcf per year increasing to around 160Tcf per year by 2030, the world has between 60 and several hundred years of conventional and unconventional natural gas remaining. This being so, it seems reasonable to expect that gas will be joined with ‘clean coal’, nuclear and renewables in a sensible UK government strategy looking forward to a more environmentally-friendly, secure and cheaper energy future for the UK. In… Continue

Added by David Bamford on December 20, 2009 at 10:13am — No Comments

Kevin Forbes Difficulties Finding Oil and Gas Canidates in a Down Turn

With the present decline in the gas and oil industry along with the recent trend for pay offs and pay cuts, a vast majority of individuals are looking for better prospects. The down turn has resulted in fewer jobs but more people looking for work. It’s a difficult situation for recruiters, now more than ever… Continue

Added by Kevin Forbes on December 8, 2009 at 1:48pm — No Comments

David Bamford Storing Carbon Dioxide

Without raising the arguments about the existence and causes of global warming, perhaps we can all agree that it would be sensible to find ‘power alternatives’ which do not involve burning increasingly scarce fossil fuels and pumping large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. In the media, other than conservation, reports and discussions tend to focus on ‘a return to nuclear’, the viability of wave systems, the contribution of solar, the desirability of ‘wind farms’ – indeed if one drives around… Continue

Added by David Bamford on November 22, 2009 at 1:00pm — No Comments

David Bamford Some interesting links

I thought I'd draw your attention to a few interesting things that you can find on the InterNet, related to oil & gas topics. First of all, if you're interested in the Digital Oil Field, David Latin of BP has started a blog covering up to date news and info in the Digital Oil patch: you can find it at http://davelatin-digitaloilfield.blogspot.com/ Secondly, Shell has been promoting some interesting lectures via the Geological Society of London and these are available at the Ge… Continue

Added by David Bamford on November 19, 2009 at 2:30pm — No Comments

Kevin Forbes A new website is set to change the way oil companies and agencies recruit employees. Launched to c…

A new website is set to change the way oil companies and agencies recruit employees. Launched to candidates at Offshore Europe and due to go live to recruiters soon, http://www.oilandgaspeople.com raises the bar to new levels with their bold and very unconventiona… Continue

Added by Kevin Forbes on November 9, 2009 at 8:47am — No Comments

David Bamford AIM oil & gas companies: a ‘small craft advisory

As I understand it, a ‘small craft advisory’ is a type of warning issued by the National Weather Service in the USA, most frequently in coastal areas, when winds have reached, or are expected to reach within 12 hours, a speed marginally less that that which is considered gale force. The sign denoting a small craft advisory is one red, triangular flag; two such flags, one placed above the other, signify a gale warning. The National Weather Service does not specify what constitutes a “small craft”… Continue

Added by David Bamford on November 7, 2009 at 4:34pm — No Comments

Kevin Forbes Oil and Gas People leads the way with exciting new recruitment model aimed at the oil and gas industry

A new website is set to change the way oil companies and agencies recruit employees. Launched to candidates at Offshore Europe and due to go live to recruiters soon, http://www.oilandgaspeople.com raises the bar to new levels with their bold and very unconventiona… Continue

Added by Kevin Forbes on November 1, 2009 at 1:38pm — No Comments

David Bamford Finding Petroleum: Why attend SEG, EAGE, SPE, AAPG annual meetings?

I see that the annual SEG Convention was held at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, 25 – 30 October 2009, that is, last week. Now as I recall Albert Einstein's definition of "ultimate madness" is... "Doing the same thing again and again hoping for different results"! So my first question is this: why does anybody from an oil & gas company bother to attend such massive conventions, at least why do they attend more than once? As it happens, I’ve been to the SEG in Houst… Continue

Added by David Bamford on November 1, 2009 at 8:57am — No Comments

David Bamford Finding Petroleum: Visualization

The a la carte nature of technical exploration processes raises profound issues with respect to both work-flow processes and comprehension. How can an exploration team comprehend multi-faceted and sometimes conflicting interpretations, both efficiently and effectively? The process can be rather cumbersome, bringing both inefficiency and ineffectiveness to exploration management and decision-making; optimization will bring important benefits in terms of both cycle-time and cost reductions… Continue

Added by David Bamford on October 25, 2009 at 3:50pm — 1 Comment

David Bamford Finding Petroleum: Spatial Integration

In 1988, when I was BP’s Chief Geophysicist in Aberdeen, my then new Chief Geologist colleague introduced what to me was a brand new concept – a style of mapping which combined chronostratigraphy, sedimentation, structuration, source rock presence and maturation as a way of understanding geology on scales from the regional to the prospect-specific. Over the next fifteen years, until I retired in 2003, Gross Depositional Environment (GDE), Common Risk Segment (CRS) and Composite Common Risk Segme… Continue

Added by David Bamford on October 18, 2009 at 5:00pm — No Comments

Kevin Forbes New oil and gas recruitment solution to offer a more efficient service for recruiters and candidates

With the current down turn in the oil industry and a recent trend for pay cuts and pay offs, a record number of people in the industry are now seeking employment. The decline in oil prices has lead to projects being put on hold and some projects being cancelled altogether. Major oil companies are looking to reduce costs, and in doing so are cutting their work force. This has an immediate impact on the recruitment industry, with some recruitment companies reporting half the amount of positions a… Continue

Added by Kevin Forbes on October 15, 2009 at 3:01pm — No Comments

David Bamford Finding Petroleum: Integration (again!)

As I said in an earlier blog, at the risk of gross over-simplification, the technical process in exploration can be represented by the pyramid shown below: note that this is just one face of a pyramid – another might describe the whole process of Portfolio and Prospect Inventory management, for example. In this technical face, various different types of data (in blue) combine to give particular insights (in green) which are then integrated to reach a key stage in the evaluat… Continue

Added by David Bamford on October 11, 2009 at 2:49pm — No Comments

Featured Blog Posts

View All

Latest Blog Posts

Most Popular Blog Posts

Blog Topics by Tags

Monthly Archives

2010

2009

2008



Download issue 22 Jan Feb 2010
Download Digital Energy Journal Jan Feb 2010

Published by Finding Petroleum and Digital Energy Journal

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Privacy  |  Terms of Service

Sign in to chat!