The oil and gas industry must break the paradigm of the current exploration model

Abstract

An analysis of the exploration model that the oil and gas industry currently follows suggests that it often restricts innovation and inhibits exploration efforts. Examples of large, underexplored areas with significant oil and gas potential demonstrate how the current exploration model fails to allow adequate exploration efforts to be conducted. A description of a possible new exploration model is presented, involving the use of exploration technologies already available, as a means of breaking the paradigm of the current exploration model. Results of recent applications of such a model suggest that it can be applied both onshore and offshore, and that it is effective in detecting anomalies associated with significant hydrocarbon accumulations. Employing the new exploration model proposed, it was possible to effectively identify 99% of known hydrocarbon accumulations, although it was most effective at detecting hydrocarbon accumulation anomalies with a linear extent of over 2 km, and it also allowed a valuable ranking of the identified leads. In conjunction with appropriate exploration tools, it reduced exploration risk by avoiding “false alarms,” since it can effectively indicate areas without hydrocarbon potential, even when other geophysical tools would suggest prospectivity. These results suggest that the proposed alternative exploration model can provide a more direct means of assessing the hydrocarbon potential of large exploratory areas, even before other geophysical investigations provide detailed information on possible targets. Breaking the paradigm of the current exploration model may thus be able to shorten the exploration cycle, reduce costs and allow resource development to proceed in frontier regions that would not otherwise be likely to attract exploratory efforts.