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Issue 1, Volume 9, 2012

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Media Guide

Editorials

Articles

Surprise! A Giant New Field

The oil industry is full of surprises. One of the biggest this year has been the discovery of a giant field, not in a new frontier, but in that well-worn old area – the Norwegian North Sea.

As this edition of GEO ExPro magazine bears out, some of the most exciting areas in the oil and gas industry at the moment are in Africa; and not the traditionally ‘oily’ places, like the Niger Delta, equatorial West Africa or the Libyan Desert, but previously disregarded regions like the West African transform margin, presalt Angola and the east African Rift Valley – the latter featuring on our dramatic front cover.

One Year On

The first anniversary of the Macondo disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has been marked in a number of ways. Foremost it has been an opportunity to remember the eleven men who lost their lives. But it has also been a chance to take stock of the progress which has been made in ensuring that no other families will have to endure such tragedy.

This Year’s Frontier

The Arctic and the Bay of Bengal are two exciting but very different frontier areas, both suggesting great potential, but offering many challenges to the hydrocarbon industry.

Life in the Old Dog Yet!

Even a seriously mature province like the North Sea can bring surprises. The Catcher discovery, made in June this year, is proof that impressive new hydrocarbon accumulations can still be found there, 45 years after the first discovery was made.

Lessons to be Learnt

So, the Macondo well has finally stopped leaking and should be permanently sealed by the end of September, nearly five months since it first suffered a major blow-out. This has been confirmed as the world’s worst ever oil spill, with nearly five million barrels of oil having poured into waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Thousands of birds and sea life have been killed or badly injured and the economy of the adjacent coast, very dependent on the Gulf, has taken a serious knocking.

Agreement in the Barents Sea

“This is a historic day. We have reached a breakthrough in the most important outstanding issue between Norway and the Russian Federation,” said Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg prior to the signing of an agreement between the Norwegian and the Russian negotiating delegations on the bilateral maritime delimitation in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean.

Shooting Seismic Does not Kill Fish

“Sound waves from seismic data acquisition resulted in increased catches for some species and smaller catches for others.” To me, that sounds a bit inconclusive, but it is still the main result from research done on an important fishing ground and a frontier exploration province offshore Norway during the summer of 2009.

Iraq’s overwhelming problems

Roughly 60 percent of the world’s oil reserves and 41 percent of the world’s gas reserves belong to Middle Eastern countries. Some of that - actually, quite a bit - rests in the Iraqi subsurface.