An inventory of petroleum source rocks in the World’s major sedimentary basins show that six geological intervals in Earth's history generated over 90% of the World's conventional oil and gas discoveries.

Discovered in 2000 at the Elm Coulee Field in Montana, Williston Basin’s Bakken Formation is currently the hottest onshore oil play in the U. S. and Canada.

Although geologists working in the industry have access to tremendous subsurface data, relatively few of the data become public domain, says Dr. John Lorenz, President of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

The existence of a source rock is a prerequisite for finding oil and gas. Without a source, the prospect, the play or the basin is bound to be “dry”. An understanding of both source rock distribution and maturation history is therefore key objectives for petroleum explorationists.

This article discusses the linkage between 4D seismic responses and geomechanics. Exploitation of this relationship has helped reduce development costs and maximize recovery from the compacting Valhall reservoir.

Inspiring and educating future geoscientists is vital to ensure that innovation in Earth science can continue. The Rotunda Museum in Scarborough in the UK, as well as being the world's first purpose-built geology museum, emphasizes geoscience learning with interactive exhibits and 'hands-on' events.

Deep-reading technologies image the interwell space at higher resolution and provide a new scale of characterization that was previously not possible.

There is now growing industry excitement in anticipation of the forthcoming Gabonese Licensing Round. The Round is increasingly being hailed as one of the best opportunities in many years to participate in a prospective, but as yet underexplored region.

A permanent 4D system for reservoir monitoring has been established in less than three years. The investment is based on market research predicting a huge increase in permanent systems throughout the world.

Christian Höcker spent over twenty years with European super giant Shell, where he witnessed many changes, before moving to a completely different working environment in small start-up company JOA Oil and Gas.

The first of the Geocontroversies debates held at the Petroleum Geology Conference in London earlier this year brought up some interesting arguments and ideas around the concept of ‘Peak Oil’.