Jun 15, 2021 | 07:00 AM CST
June 15, 2021 | 7:00 a.m. - 8:00 a.m. CST (UTC-05:00)
The risks associated with subsurface characterization in frontier regions can be a barrier to operators, especially in the current evolving energy market. Establishing the fairway of a working source rock is critical to regional and basin scale screening workflows and to understanding risk and uncertainty. Neftex® Predictions and its integrated paleoclimate work can help address this significant subsurface challenge and keep frontier areas viable for exploration.
Our Earth Systems paleoclimate modelling offering can be used to interrogate both the relative likelihood of the presence and the character of a source rock. These modelling results have been calibrated and ‘ground truthed’ using modern, as well as geological data and analogues, and thus allows for insights in data-poor areas allowing the de-risking of plays and the high-grading of areas for more detailed investigation.
To demonstrate the capability of this exploration toolbox we have addressed a key challenge in East Africa. This margin has a number of gas discoveries, but very few oil discoveries in spite of numerous oil seeps. One hypothesis is that there is a currently undiscovered Cretaceous source rock. We use our Earth Systems predictions coupled with analogous organic geochemistry data to efficiently screen the margin for presence of Cretaceous oil-prone source rocks and test multiple play fairway scenarios.
Chris Willcox
Senior Geoscientist