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Some ICE Treasures For The New Year
The deadline for the PESA News Resources Christmas/New Year issue invariably prompts reflection on the year's words, good and bad, and 2011 was no exception. I knew this year's deadline would come roaring in while I was away and I had decided in advance to write about 'bad' words from years past and present.
I am delighted, however, to have been stimulated at AAPG's 2011 International Conference and Exhibition (ICE) to write instead about 'good' words.
I've been mindful for a while now that some words I have written about in the past were long overdue for a revisit. 'However' is a good example: its incorrect use as an unpunctuated alternate for but is increasingly common. Such revisiting is not a ploy to ease the columnist's task but, rather, a recognition that the readership is constantly changing. When I wrote about 'compose' and 'comprise' in the first Words column, today's new PESApersons were in primary school.
By coincidence, Vern Stefanic, Editor of AAPG Explorer, raised this same point with me at ICE. How does a professional society itself, or its journal, or a column or theme section within the journal, continue to serve a changing membership? Not changing randomly, but as all societies do, by losing the old and gaining the young? How regularly do you recycle and revisit material to serve that new membership? Perhaps, as Vern suggested, whenever you have something new to bring to the old themes.
It is a truism to say that conferences vary greatly in their value to delegates. What is less clear is what determines that value, because different delegates, even with common experience and interests, will often judge the same conference very differently. I find the determining factor can be a single session or even a single conversation. A year or two later, much of the conference will have merged with all other conferences but that special element, for better or worse, will stay clear.
For me, the special event at ICE 2011 in Milan was the opening session: a series of talks, loosely built around the theme of Leonardo da Vinci and the pursuit of knowledge, that offered several words I was delighted to hear revisited. So too did the opening ceremony and a business forum later in the conference.
Field geology. Rocks, if you prefer. Mario Carminatti, Exploration Executive Manager for Petrobras, stated emphatically that field geology studies were of critical importance for training both geologists and geophysicists. He emphasised 'geophysicists' several time. My notes say: 'field work is essential for understanding seismic'; 'field studies allow better interpretation of seismic'; 'knowledge of sedimentary rocks is essential for those doing inversion of physical properties'.
Referring to Petrobras' production, he discussed the critical impact on future production and profitability of the geological model used for the reservoir. That model is developed very early in the development planning process, and getting it correct, or, at least as correct as possible, is imperative. The best approach, he suggested, is to find an outcrop analogue for the reservoir and send the entire team there to study it.
Later in the conference, the legendary Dr Mutti spoke on the recognition that some reservoirs in offshore Brazil fields are now seen not to be turbidity sands sensu stricto but turbidite sands which have been reworked and redistributed by ocean bottom currents, and the differences in reservoir response are now proving problematic. Back to the outcrops, he insisted.
People. Guiseppe Tannoia, eni's Vice President Research and Technical Innovation, said that people are the most important part of the exploration process. He discussed eni's strong commitment to technology application and research but argued that, in the final analysis, the technology is less important than the people who use it. Our industry needs skilled people and companies will serve themselves and the future best by ensuring that they develop, promote and reward skill. Transfer of knowledge and skills from the senior people to the new generation is a fundamental requirement.
Rob Fisher, Senior Adviser at Bain and Co, spoke on this same point in a later session. In a recent industry poll, 50% of companies exploring and producing in the North Sea ranked 'lack of skilled people' as their prime concern. Among NOCs worldwide, the proportion was 100%. Fisher also referred to the ageing industry population - 50% of SPE members will retire in the next 5-7 years - and the need for training.
Geologists. Luca Bertelli, eni Vice President Exploration, spoke at the opening ceremony of the need for geologists to claim back control of exploration from the administrators and bureaucrats.
Long-term planning. Saudi Aramco's Mohammad Al-Qahtani said that because Saudi Arabia controls about 20% of the world's oil reserves, they have both the need and the luxury of multi-decade planning. Their research is directed towards that end. Long-term planning now sees other NOCs as research leaders. PetroChina is now the leading research company; Petrobras is now on a par with Exxon and Shell.
Future technology. Al-Qahtani spoke of gigacell simulation models. They dream of modelling oil migration in the entire Saudi Basin, using a 10-billion-cell model. He spoke also of their work with biological nano-agents, injecting them into the reservoir to collect fluid, pressure and other information and then recovering them and extracting the data. From zero recovery in 2007 core experiments to 99% in 2010 shows the pace of success. How long until these nano agents are recovering an extra 20% of oil from the reservoir, adding hundreds of billions of barrels to reserves? Next will come intelligent fields where electromagnetic and gravity data will monitor fluid movement in real time.
Oil supplies. Al-Qahtani also said we have used about 1 trillion (T) barrels of oil to date and have an estimated 1.2 Tbbl reserves remaining. Added to some 2 Tbbl yet-to-find and about 1.5 Tbbl of unconventional reserves, this gives us a total of 4.7 Tbbl, which is about 100 years supply at current consumption rates. And that's not counting those nano agents. On this same theme, Rob Fisher pointed out that the rate of decline of oil reserves is not increasing, as is commonly claimed, but has been stable at about 6% for some time. Measured in days-of-consumption remaining, oil reserves have been constant since the 1980s.
I don't pretend these brief comments capture all that those speakers said but they are some of the words I scribbled down while I listened. I thought they were good words, providing good instruction and direction, and the reassurance of much promise for the future of our industry and the world we fuel.
What an exciting time lies ahead for the new generation of 'oil finders'.
Two final comments for them. Eni's Tannoia: if you don't know where you're going, any road will do. Bain and Co's Fisher: People don't know what they will want until someone shows it to them. Those are good words for 2012 and for years to come.
Peter Purcell
