Ever since the 19th century oil boom, exploration geoscientists have developed and leveraged new technologies to help them gain a greater understanding of the subsurface geology and depositional history, enabling them to find new oil and gas discoveries with increasingly greater precision and confidence. The need to identify new low-risk opportunities as cheaply as possible with greater certainty has become more important than ever with the decline in oil and gas prices. Companies cannot afford to make inaccurate interpretations and poor predictions that lead to bad decisions and costly investments, wasting valuable resources. Against this backdrop of increased financial pressure, digital exploration is coming into its own.

Navigating the flood

Digital exploration is changing the way in which geoscientists work. In today’s “information age” the sheer amount of data available means that finding the right data and developing insights is cumbersome. Companies need to continually invest in managing internal and external data, digitizing and indexing both unstructured and structured information. However, simply providing access to information is not enough. Researchers need to be able to effectively filter, contextualize and integrate large volumes of public and proprietary data from disparate sources and of varying types (e.g., well logs, charts and maps) and formats to accurately predict which prospects are most promising.

Unfortunately, companies often do not invest in helping their exploration teams easily and effectively navigate data, which over time increases project costs and risk, highlighting the importance of digital tools. Geoscientists need solutions that align better to the way they work. For example, almost all data and information will eventually end up in some GIS or 3-D modeling software, allowing users to quickly evaluate the exploration potential using all of the pieces of information available. But frustratingly, most data that are generated are unstructured, meaning they can’t be easily searched, discovered or integrated into other software. The result is that many companies are overlooking valuable data because they lack the right tools to find them.

Tools of the future

Research shows that companies understand the challenge facing their exploration teams: Nearly three-quarters plan to allocate between 6% and 10% of their capital budgets to digital technology in the coming years. However, given that so many companies are under financial pressure, it’s vital that such investments are made wisely. User experience is especially important when dealing with the digital “natives” currently entering the workforce.

By adopting tools that use sophisticated taxonomies and algorithms to search and filter across interdisciplinary information and that enable collaboration and sharing across teams, companies will help reduce bias and error, make better decisions in shorter amounts of time and mitigate risk. Investing in the right tools also can provide assurances regarding the trustworthiness and validity of data, a key advantage over consumer search engines since the search results will be relevant to end users because of the actual content and not because some entity has paid for that content to be there.

Bridging the generational divide

The discussion of when and if oil prices will return to precrash levels is a matter of continued debate. However, there is no disagreement that for companies to achieve desirable success rates, they need to be better at managing, finding and integrating data so that they can better identify risks before they drill. Having the right digital solutions enables companies to gather vast amounts of data about a site without even setting foot there and enables teams to share data and insights across continents, which can save companies considerable resources. Just as oil companies must manage and control the flow of their wells, they need to give their teams the right tools to properly dive into and navigate this ocean of data, not just stand on the shore and guess.

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