For those paying close attention to things happening in energy, it is becoming more obvious with each passing year that there is a brand new correction underway related to the previously perceived limitations of world oil resources. This new revolution, the origins of which can be traced back to entrepreneurs in Texas, has only just begun to spread to the rest of the world.
It was widely known that enormous volumes of hydrocarbons were locked up in the world’s geologic basins and that the bulk of these volumes were considered essentially inaccessible. Within the past eight years, however, things have changed. The causes of the oil and gas resource adjustments underway today can be categorized as two-fold: 1) better market prices for the resources; i.e., oil at $100 a barrel makes formerly marginal development now economical, and; 2) technological breakthroughs in both well drilling and completions.
It was widely known that enormous volumes of hydrocarbons were locked up in the world’s geologic basins and that the bulkof these volumes were considered essentially inaccessible.
Some, including me, would say there is a third cause for recent adjustments and this is the new understanding of the geological evolution of the subsurface of oil and gas basins. Subsurface findings are contributing to resource adjustments in very major ways as well.
An interesting perspective for this awakening is shown in Figure 1. For over 100 years the oil and gas industry got better and better at looking for what we have historically called modern oil entrapments (traps for short), i.e., locations (formations) where the oil migrated and awaited discovery. Industry used their geological skills to map subsurface structures, pioneered remotely applied geophysical methods to image the earth’s structure, and developed coring techniques and borehole logging devices to characterize rock properties and the fluids they contain.
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