Mohamed Al Harthy, one of the first generation of Omani petroleum geologists and a pivotal member of the rapidly growing Geological Society of Oman, has an infectious enthusiasm and passion for geology, retained as he has risen through the ranks of Petroleum Development Oman.

New leadership, new roads, expanding cities, new found wealth and freedom are bringing dramatic changes to China’s countryside and its people. Has this also brought with it new opportunities in the energy sector?

The Raven Field in the Nile Delta, discovered in 2004, has proved the window to a major new play in this prolific geological province and has de-risked a significant volume of Egypt’s yet-to-find hydrocarbons.

The United Nations International Year of Planet Earth (2008) received its Global Launch at UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, on February 12 and 13.

It’s about time to explore the offshore in more detail. That means the international oil industry is now welcome to bid in the next licensing round closing in April.

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD), responsible for resource management on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, has a new boss who is also a geologist by profession. We talked to Director General Bente Nyland about the future of this huge geological province.

The announcement by BP of a significant gas discovery in January in the offshore Nile Delta confirms the area as one of the most promising gas provinces being explored at present.

By combining this information with our present geophysical understanding of the area, it may be possible to give more refined prognoses of the subsurface development and economic potential of analogous structures in this extensive but still little explored hydrocarbon province.

Innovative thinking and a new play concept finds a giant gas field on a lease block that had been explored for 50 years and drilled 11 times.

Standing on the bird migration highway between Europe and Africa, this jewel of an island offers more than a supreme ‘twitching’ experience. Qeshm aims to be a major ecotourism destination as well as an upstream player.

Faults and fractures are often an important factor in determining hydrocarbon storage capacity and productivity in reservoirs such as tight carbonates, quartzites and basements. The use of reservoir analogues such as those found in Catalonia in north-east Spain can be key to the interpretation of fractured carbonates reservoirs in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Passive low-frequency seismic is an area of active research and development, and is rapidly being taken up as a new direct hydrocarbon indicator (DHI) technique for exploration. The interest in the method is high, in particular since Spectraseis AG, the leading provider of low-frequency geophysical solutions to the oil and gas industry won the World Oil Award for Best Exploration Technology in October 2007. However, despite the empirical evidence supporting the technique, the underlying physical mechanism has not yet been fully identified.