Emerging technologies in exploration can be mind-boggling in their complexity and in the fact that they continually push the limits of constantly improving computing speed.

But the decision-makers within oil companies have to see beyond the bells and whistles and determine a technology's effectiveness in reducing risk and increasing success rates. The neatest gizmo in the world is useless if oil company exploration managers can't see its advantages in reducing their finding costs.
So E&P polled companies that have successful track records in exploration to find out what they were using, what they would like to be using and what their ultimate exploration technology "wish lists" would be. The answers may be somewhat surprising.

All about integration

Most explorationists these days do not hold out hope for a single "silver bullet" that will solve all of their problems. Rather, they look to the successful integration of several technologies to come closer to a clear picture of the subsurface and the petroleum system.

According to Mike Naylor, technical director for Global Exploration at Shell, the amazing advent of 3-D seismic in the 1980s and 1990s may have perpetuated the myth that another breakthrough technology is on the horizon. "I think many people regarded 3-D seismic as the universal panacea, the silver bullet," Naylor said. "It did allow a great many breakthroughs and allowed us to de-risk a lot of prospects that we couldn't previously do. It enabled us to develop methodologies around direct hydrocarbon indicators, amplitudes, body interpretation, etc.

"Maybe that creates the expectation that there's another silver bullet out there to be found, and I just don't think there is."

Oil companies of all sizes view the technology as less important than the people who are going to be applying it. At Anadarko, people are regarded as the real "cutting-edge" technology.

"E&P is a very high-tech business, and we pride ourselves at being at the front end of that," said Martin Evans, manager of international deepwater exploration for Anadarko. "You can have really good technology, but unless you've got really good people who can use and integrate the different technologies out there, it's not of much use."

Added Stephen Keenihan, exploration manager for Apache Corp. in Australia, "We want to drill good prospects that are well-considered, so our explorers are equipped with the technology, skills and support to do this well. We have a reputation of being a 'can-do' exploration group - we like to test good ideas with the drillbit quickly."

At the smaller end of the spectrum, companies like PetroQuest Energy Inc., based in Lafayette, La., and focusing most of its exploration efforts in the Gulf Coast area of the United States, rely on their geoscientists to make the best use of available technology to properly access a trend's or prospect's proper risk profile.

"Our geoscientists use the latest datasets available," said Steve Green, senior vice president of exploration for PetroQuest. "Prospect generation relies upon a basic understanding of regional geology, local geophysical attributes and production characteristics. This understanding provides a foundation for the geoscientist to generate prospects within a geologic section within any given area. This leads to a better understanding of any particular geophysical attributes that may need to be applied, such as amplitude variations with offset (AVO), prestack depth migration or spectral decomposition. All of the above can lead to reducing the overall risk of the prospect."

Similar to most exploration companies, PetroQuest relies on multiclient surveys for the majority of its 3-D seismic data. Green said that knowledge of the needed input parameters in reprocessing is critical to a successful reprocessed 3-D data volume. This allows the geoscientist to apply the correct geophysical attributes, which then enables the team to present a complete technical recommendation with the correct risk profile.

The fact that they'll have to justify their conclusions not only to senior management but often to peers at other companies who might be considering a working interest in the project results in a thorough assessment of each project.

"All of our geoscientists have a good understanding of return on investment and how we deploy our capital," said Exploration Manager Mark Stover. "We have hurdle rates, and they know going in whether or not they should continue to pursue a specific project or put it away and focus on something else."

Frontier exploration

Many companies are focusing at least some of their exploration efforts on frontier areas where very little is known or understood about possible petroleum systems. These areas require a different mindset than areas in which a lot of data is available.

Apache has been wildly successful in some of its frontier exploration in Egypt and Australia. According to John Bedingfield, exploration manager in Egypt, a studied approach to these areas is critical.
"It's essential to understand not only what's important in making a successful play but also to clearly separate the knowable from the unknowable on a pre-drill basis," he said. "We're under pressure to deliver results. Apache explorationists are very good at collecting and processing data to get to a practical level of irreducible risk. In other words, it's always necessary to strike a balance between data analysis and collection. We're good at recognizing when we've reached the point of diminishing returns in terms of analysis."

Keenihan added that new visualization technology "puts a huge amount of information at the fingertips of the explorers and brings many disciplines together." However, he added, "These systems are only as good as the data are reliable, and there is a tendency for explorers to lose touch with the rocks and the basic data gathering work. It's good to keep the old skills honed as well - being able to examine cores and understand what they mean or knowing the pitfalls in seismic acquisition and processing."

Naylor said that Shell has moved its focus in recent years to what he calls a "big cat" approach, a shift from near-field exploration to bigger finds that will more significantly impact the bottom line. While the company is continuing to explore in areas like Nigeria that have already paid huge dividends, it also has a team of regional geologists who are working a whole range of basins to pursue the next "big cats." "In the last 18 months they've worked about 150 basins to various degrees of detail," Naylor said. "They have to be very focused in the way they work."

In these areas, some almost old-fashioned data gathering techniques are still used. Two-D seismic, for example, is often the best way to get a general feel for the underlying structures in an area, although very few drilling decisions are based solely on 2-D data. Gravity and magnetics data, also called "potential fields" data, are still being collected, and with improvements in data processing over the last decade, these data are offering up some very sophisticated images of overall basin geometry and structure. The Shell geologists also rely on some top-end basin modeling tools that take into account thermal modeling, maturity modeling and hydrocarbon migration. "It's not just about having data and analyzing it," Naylor added. "It's also legitimate - indeed, encouraged - based on very scanty geological data to draw a sketch of a basin and a sketch of the cross-sections showing how you think the hydrocarbons are generated and how they've migrated to the structure. We need to encourage our explorers to be creative geologically."

Cool tools

That being said, any oil company that prides itself on its exploration track record would be shooting itself in the foot if it didn't stay abreast of new developments and apply them where needed. Most companies routinely use 3-D seismic and apply the latest processing and interpretation techniques to understand the data. But seismic is just part of the picture, and the consensus is that it's a tool to understanding the geology, not the final answer.

Anadarko relies on its Idea labs, immersive visualization centers where the asset team can work together to analyze its prospects. Evans added that risk analysis tools also play an important role in that work.
Bedingfield broke Apache's tools into three broad categories: geophysics, geology and formation evaluation. He sees 3-D seismic technology as the single largest contributing factor to Apache's success in Egypt. Added to that are the regular usage of sequence stratigraphy tools, basin modeling and fault seal analysis. And the region's mixed carbonate and clastic lithologies require the use of formation evaluation tools to reflect what's actually present in the potential reservoir system.

So what's the wish list like? Responses varied from technologies that are commercially available today but are too cost-prohibitive to use routinely to technologies that don't exist but would make everyone's life a lot simpler if they did.

In the former category are techniques such as high-resolution seismic and more application of it in an exploration mode. Naylor mentioned the potential fields data as something that's just now becoming available that he thinks will have a significant impact. Airborne remote sensing is appealing, as are geochemical sensing methods. Naylor added that the use of low-frequency seismic is showing promise in imaging below basalt.

Electromagnetic imaging has really taken off in the past few months. It still has its limitations. Also known as "seabed logging," the method works best in deep water and currently faces depth-of-investigation challenges, but it's likely that both of these issues will be overcome in the months and years to come. Shell already has used the technique in Brazil, West Africa and Malaysia, and it's already affected decisions on drilling a well and on license applications. "We have quite big expectations for a more extensive program and a bigger impact on decision-making in 2005," Naylor said.

While acknowledging that there's no silver bullet, these people can still be forgiven for wishing a little (after all, many of those wishes have come true in the past). Green would like to see a better understanding of seismic velocity as it applies to prospect generation and reprocessing of existing 3-D surveys. "Velocity is the largest unknown we face, even in mature but complex basins such as the Gulf Coast," he said.

Evans would like to see faster, cheaper 3-D land surveys, and he also mentioned the use of fiber-optics technology and higher-resolution satellite imagery.

Naylor would like to see more data collection techniques that can be done from an airplane - geochemical surveys, for instance. And Bedingfield hopes for an expert interpretation system that could fully interpret a 3-D survey at the 90% confidence level, leaving the interpreter to focus on the last 10%. "Systems we've looked at usually fall short due to difficulties relating to 'putting the data in context,'" he said. "I think most experienced geoscientists who have looked at 3-D seismic volumes in visualization settings quickly reach an almost intuitive understanding of the structure and amplitudes as reflected in the data. If I had a wish list, it would be to have a robust interpretation system that would more easily capture this degree of understanding and transform it into a quantitative product."

No question, then, that exciting technologies will continue to emerge. "I've been an oil and gas explorer and researcher for more than 25 years, and I've got a strong belief in the value of technology," Naylor said. "Exploration is simply too competitive and too expensive to be able to do it with blunt tools. Technology is absolutely vital for de-risking and keeping the cost down. I think the exploration business has a long and lively future ahead of it."

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