Exploration and Oil & Gas News
All of Team DUG is thinking of our colleagues and friends in Houston and hoping that they are staying safe from the devastatation that Hurricane Harvey is currently inflicting on the city. The pictures we are seeing across the world are beyond comprehension. We hope that relief is in sight soon.
PGS has started acquisition of its latest Barents Sea MultiClient project, building a special portfolio for the Norwegian 24th Round. This combined GeoStreamer and EM survey covers 3000 sq. km in the Harstad Basin. Initial EM images will be available by the end of October, with fast track 3D seismic ready early next year.
The survey is located in the southwestern part of the Barents Sea between the Senja Ridge and the Finnmark Platform, covering all the announced blocks in quadrant 7018.
Sanco Swift is undertaking the 3D GeoStreamer seismic acquisition. The Nordic Explorer, which is responsible for the EM part, arrived in the area last week, following rigging in Bergen. The first EM line was completed Saturday 19 August and almost half of the area has now been covered. This survey is part of a larger, prefunded EM MultiClient program in the Barents Sea.
Initial EM images will be ready for viewing by the end of October. Fast track 3D seismic data will be available in Q1 2018.
The team at Seis News is thinking of all of our friends and associates in Houston and Hong Kong / Macau. We hope that they are safe and comfortable. The various views and media coverage available on line show the devastation that has been caused and it follows that the recover will take some time to effect.
We wish you well and look forward to seeing you all again soon.
Typhoon Hato
On Wednesday morning, the Hong Kong Observatory issued a typhoon warning signal number 10, the highest such level in Hong Kong’s warning system, for Typhoon Hato. A level 10 warning signal has only ever been issued 15 times in Hong Kong since 1946, with the last issuance coming in 2012.
Early Wednesday morning, Hato slammed into the autonomous region Macau, just south of Hong Kong, causing widespread flooding and damage in one of the most densely populated regions in the world. At least 16 deaths are blamed on the typhoon that local residents are describing as “the strongest and the scariest typhoon” the area has ever experienced. Powerful words for an area that averages five to six typhoons passing close by per year.
Tropical Storm Pakhar followed on just four days later.
Hurricane Harvey
Hurricane Harvey has slammed into Texas with initial winds of up to 130mph (215km/h) battering coastal areas.
The biggest storm to hit the US mainland in 13 years is moving slowly, with 16.43in (42cm) of rain reported in one area.
Catastrophic flooding is expected, though Harvey’s winds were downgraded from category four to category one.
Some residents are feared trapped in collapsed buildings and there have been widespread power cuts.
More than 200,000 customers are without electricity, utility companies say.
After freeing up federal aid for the worst-affected areas, President Donald Trump praised emergency services in a tweet, saying: “You are doing a great job – the world is watching! Be safe.”
Take care out there from all at Seis News
Seismic surveys critical part if the US is to harness its energy potential
The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in early August published its final programmatic environmental impact statement (EIS), evaluating the environmental impacts of geological & geophysical surveys on marine mammals in the Gulf of Mexico region.
According to the bureau, the EIS establishes a framework for BOEM to guide subsequent National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analyses of site-specific actions while identifying and analyzing appropriate mitigation measures to be used during future G&G activities on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) in support of oil and gas, renewable energy, and marine mineral resource programs.
Using a tiering process based on this programmatic evaluation, BOEM will address the impacts of future site-specific actions in subsequent NEPA evaluations.
The EIS release came as the U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking to expand offshore drilling in federal waters. It is a response to a court-ordered settlement of a lawsuit brought by environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Center for Biological Diversity, Gulf Restoration Network and Sierra Club, represented by Earthjustice.
The extensive report was not very well received by environmentalist groups nor by the oil and gas industry. In fact, this was a rare occasion that environmentalists and the oil and gas industry agreed on something, with both sides expressing disappointment by the report’s findings.
Namely, while the oil and gas industry claimed the report was not based on scientific facts and as such it is putting energy exploration at risk, the environmentalists claimed that BOEM did not do enough to protect the marine mammals from the seismic surveys.
According to Earthjustice, a non-profit law organization dedicated to environmental issues, the report outlines possible mitigation measures, including closure areas where seismic blasting would be banned, and reductions in the amount of activity permissible each year.
Clive Palmer’s lawyers blasted over last-minute evidence in $22m lawsuit
While Clive Palmer was jetting into Townsville today, a judge was slamming his lawyers in Brisbane for bringing up last-minute evidence in a $22 million lawsuit.
Mr Palmer’s flagship company, Mineralogy, wants a declaration that it is not obliged to pay exploration company BGP Geoexplorer any money over a $22 million debt owed to it by another of his businesses, Palmer Petroleum, which is in liquidation.
BGP Geoexplorer has filed a counterclaim and the case has been set down for trial over two days in the Supreme Court starting today.
Justice David Jackson questioned why Mineralogy’s legal team wanted to rely on a new expert report just five days before the trial in an attempt to prove its case that BGP breached a contract for exploration work done in the Gulf of Papua.
“How can that possibly be appropriate subject matter to raise five days before the trial?” he said.
He ordered the lawyers to prepare an affidavit by 2.30pm today “as to who considered it appropriate, and why”.
“Because it seems to me that it’s a fundamental default in the procedural law of this court,” Justice Jackson said.
Mr Palmer touched down in Townsville this morning to visit the Yabulu refinery of his company, Queensland Nickel.
QNI went into liquidation last year with $300 million in debts. More than 800 people were left out of work.
Last week, Mr Palmer had to promise not to sell the refinery until a hearing next month to decide whether his assets would be frozen amid another multimillion-dollar lawsuit brought on by QNI’s taxpayer-funded liquidators.
Introduction to CSEM
Curious about what EMGS actually provide of value to their customers?
Have a look at this video explaining in simple terms what EMGS does:
Drilling in a Digital World – Integration and digital enablement to rise above domain silos
Drilling will never be a one-size-fits-all operation. Every well presents a unique set of conditions that vary during construction. For years, the industry has been applying discrete drilling technologies and relying on incremental enhancements to improve drilling efficiencies. While this has produced noteworthy results, there are still performance inefficiencies due to the interfaces between multiple technology and service providers.
In the E&P article “Drilling in a Digital World,” Catherine MacGregor, president of the Drilling Group at Schlumberger, discusses how the industry can achieve fundamental improvements and new levels of drilling performance by adopting a holistic, consistent, and collaborative approach to managing the entire drilling system. She describes how this requires industry participants to completely rethink the way the industry operates, and the need to redesign and digitally enable workflows to drive integrated technology and service delivery platforms built on cloud-based single data sources. Read the article here.
As part of the company’s Insights series, MacGregor further shares her views on how drilling is being driven by digital workflow opportunities—such as the Schlumberger cognitive drilling rig, the company’s rig of the future. Read the article here.
Shares surge for fourth day as bid talk lingers
Shares in debt-ridden oil services group CGG surged for a fourth consecutive day on Friday, with traders and fund managers citing continuing speculation of a bid from China’s Sinopec as the main driver for the rally.
They added there was also an element of hedge funds cancelling out negative bets on CGG’s shares falling in future – known as “short covering” – as contributing to the rally.
CGG shares were up 19.4 percent at 6.1 euros in early session trading, with the stock up 110 percent over the last week.
Speculation of a bid from Sinopec first surfaced at the start of the week. A CGG spokesman said on Friday that the company had no comment to make on the bid rumours.
“We’re still in the same trend, namely talk of interest from Sinopec, but it’s really still just speculation,” said one Paris-based fund manager.
Despite the stock’s rally over the last week, CGG shares remain down by nearly 60 percent since the start of 2017.
CGG, in which the French state holds around 9 percent of the shares, filed for bankruptcy in France and the United States in June as part of a restructuring to ease its debt burden. CGG currently has debt in excess of $3 billion.
On the cutting edge of 3D seismic imaging, Total has been focusing in recent years on breakthrough technologies to continuously improve the quality of subsurface images. To solve major problems related to geophysical imaging in areas of complex topography, the company has embarked an integrated geophysics and logistics R&D project called METIS, Multiphysics Exploration Technology Integrated System. METIS aims to improve the quality and speed of data acquisition through real-time quality control and processing, while at the same time slashing both the cost and HSE risks of operations. The ultimate purpose is to be able to build ever more predictive 3D models for our interpreters.
Geophysical imaging of the subsurface in hard-to-access topography is a major challenge for oil and gas exploration. Conventional acquisition and imaging techniques can be expensive and too hazardous in terms of HSE risk — in other words, impossible to use — in some hard-to-access areas. The result is significant uncertainty in any subsurface mapping; seismic imaging is often very poor quality. Hence the need to overhaul our thinking.
To address this, in summer 2014 we introduced the Multiphysics Exploration Technology Integrated System, or METIS, project. The goal is to develop within 10 years an integrated geophysical and logistics system to acquire, process and obtain in real time quality structural and quantitative data. This innovative approach should eventually multiply the value of information (VoI) of the data acquired in complex topography, enabling us to optimize field development, secure new exploration licenses or rejuvenate the interest of acreage relinquished in the past because of an inability to understand it.
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Hurricane Harvey threatens vital Texas energy hub
Hurricane Harvey is barreling down on vital oil and gas facilities on the U.S. Gulf Coast that serve as the nerve center of America’s energy infrastructure.
The biggest risk is that this potential Category 3 storm causes prolonged disruptions to the critical refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast, which is home to nearly one-third of the nation’s capacity to turn oil into gas, diesel and other products.
By early Friday, warnings of “life-threatening” rain from Hurricane Harvey have forced the evacuation and shutdown of several refineries. Gasoline prices immediately ratcheted steadily higher, a trend that could continue for some time depending on the severity of the damage.
Not only will the storm limit the Gulf Coast’s ability to refine oil, but it’s already shut down the flow of oil shipments in and out of the Port of Corpus Christi, the nation’s leading port for crude oil exports.
“We may have never had a storm like this. The impact on the energy industry could potentially be devastating” for the next week, John LaRue, executive director of the Port of Corpus Christi, told CNNMoney.
The port has worked all week to prepare for the storm. LaRue said pilots stopped boarding vessels Thursday afternoon and maintenance workers have tied down everything that projected winds of 125 miles per hour could “turn into missiles or projectiles.”
Hurricane Harvey also forced the shutdown of the Houston Ship Channel on Friday for incoming and outgoing vessels, Platts reported.
To meet America’s enormous appetite for oil, more than 3 million barrels of waterborne crude gets shipped to the U.S. Gulf each day from places like Mexico, Colombia and Saudi Arabia, according to ClipperData. The U.S. Gulf Coast also exports about 1 million barrels of crude each day to customers overseas.