You may wonder about the picture of El Capitan, the famous granitic rock face in California’s Yosemite National Park, which has nothing to do with petroleum geology. I promise to give the answer by the end of this story.
There are probably as many ways as there are managers to express the unspoken move toward what we called the “final critical decision.” Looking back on past events like those described in Part 1, at that critical stage, I (more or less consciously) gave greater weight to one critical decision factor than the others. In the end I was inclined to take more risk than what objective technical reasons would justify. A field trip in a “quebrada” (river) named La Luna in western Venezuela, the type section of the famous source rock, impressed me forever. Knowing that the same rock or its equivalent was present below the Cusiana anticline meant so much more for me than any other criteria that I was truly sold on the prospect.
The critical decision factors can be seen as rather simple in their formulation and can often be summarized in a few elements, relatively easy to describe (although with full knowledge of the contributing preparatory works). We have seen a dominant tendency to select key positive elements of the petroleum system, or even one single geological explanation as in the case of the Bekapai discovery in Indonesia’s Mahakam Delta.
In all cases seismic was the “magic bullet” that enabled a judgement about the size of the trap. It secured our confidence in trap integrity and geometry and often allowed us to access key reservoir data. In other words, the mind operates a kind of “supersynthesis” in its own right before making the jump. This seems to me an important component of the decisive step of the full process.
The Changing World of Exploration
Albert Einstein reportedly said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” We have presented stories of the past, say, 30 years ago and more, when a certain practice of geology still gave a certain preference to a “classical,” sometimes called “old” geology. This was largely naturalistic, where intuition, experience, the use of analogues and rock observation (field and subsurface) were the dominant (successful) drivers of the decision process. “The field never lies,” to quote another giant of science, Charles Lyell, the pioneering 19th-century geologist. It was a widely accepted motto.
I will let our younger colleagues comment on future technical developments and settle for brief notes here on a few points of particular importance to illustrate the changes observed since the stories in Part 1 took place.
First, seismic is clearly now very much on top of the list. This is a growing trend since the very beginning of the technology. Nancy House gave a well-attended, comprehensive 100-year story of seismic developments, including the latest advances in unconventional applications at the “History of Petroleum Geology” session at IMAGE 2024. She highlighted the impact on exploration of fluid detection through bright spot, direct hydrocarbon indicators, amplitude-versus-offset analysis and the transition from the old normal move-out to time and post-stack depth migration, until later advances like wave equation pre-stack depth migration and reverse-time migration algorithms allowed us to solve the “fault shadow” problem and image complex V(x,y,z) or inverted salt flanks. She showed also how 3-D and new technology can improve well placement, therefore contributing game changers to the “factory” concept and improving estimated ultimate recovery prediction for unconventional development.
The widespread use of 3-D since the 1990s has been the critical decision factor since then in many plays. It played a prominent role in the follow-up programs of the Girassol discovery offshore Angola as an efficient to identifing reservoir-seal pairs, sequences and facies of turbiditic bodies, thereby improving reservoir characterization (for instance, obtaining a relationship between facies and net-to-gross ratios).
Shell’s Bill Langin gave a master talk at IMAGE 2024 on the most recent advances in seismic in the Gulf of Mexico (the Halbouty lecture). As he illustrated and by announced recent discoveries in the deep waters off Surinam and Namibia, it is clear that the sophisticated and detailed mapping of anomalies and, modelling workflows will play an increasingly critical role in strategic decision-making and provide better target-size estimations.
Second, artificial intelligence and machine-learning, although still at early stages of development, are gaining ground rapidly. They might even reach a runaway pace of development, raising questions about potential excessive confidence in this new facility with no or little understanding by explorers of how they actually work. Software and related workflows are commonly available, with notable applications including seismic structural interpretation, inversion, thin sands and unconventionals. They are somehow capable of matching human skills in interpretation, for instance mapping faults, or even doing better at identifying undetected faults and regrouping all faults into families according to azimuth, dip or size. They enable identification of otherwise unsuspected reservoir and fluid markers. As an illustration, on the seismic line obtained through a self-organized map software, one can see a colored halo created by AI/ML which did not appear on any standard processed line and is indicative of a confirmed underlying gas reservoir.
Those methodologies are even starting to have an impact on frontier exploration. For instance, TotalEnergies has leveraged ML to improve the knowledge of a complex reservoir distribution in the deepwater environment of a Cretaceous turbiditic play offshore Surinam (see the December 2024 issue of EXPLORER). By training ML on the wells previously drilled in the block and dozens of seismic cubes, and using many attributes, their geoscientists could identify channels unsuspected in more conventional approaches, all within a limited number of machine hours. Of course, the explorers should have at least some subject-matter understanding to avoid the black box syndrome, and they will have to work side by side in an integrated way with tech experts and data scientists.
Third, assurance practice is getting traction in the exploration business, and companies are increasingly taking care of the need to complement project work by taking a “nonpartisan” view of bias possibly present in risk analysis. This approach with dedicated groups of experienced explorers must be carefully handled and should not deprive the project teams of their responsibility and motivation. It is actually a more generalized and broader effort than was being done, for instance, with the cautionary steps in DHI evaluations, i.e. respecting the basics of geology and geophysics. On this matter Henry Pettingill brilliantly formulated the principle by saying, “Technology has the might, but the basics are right.”
An Evolving Management Perspective
Given the rapidly growing field of technology and an all-out digitalization of the profession, I discussed the matter with friends and colleagues at the highest management positions, active or recently retired. I expressed the feeling that an explorationist’s job is becoming ever more turned toward “quantitative” applications. I would say with an engineer’s mindset (no prejudice, indeed) that we might be losing part of the more “qualitative” or naturalistic cultural background of a geologist, as evoked in the stories in last month’s Part 1.
John Masters, a friend and distinguished oil finder and a first-class inspiring mentor in the profession, used to say, “Exploration is hard work, smart work, and an art.” So, shouldn’t we fear a disappearance of the creative way of doing business?
The answer I got during one interview with Kevin McLachlan, senior vice president of exploration for TotalEnergies can be summarized in three words: “We do both.” I can’t do any better than to report his own reassuring words: “We still have this culture in the true explorationists and most experienced prospect generators who utilize all aspects of the available data in the integration of the prospect. They use their fundamental skills of geological principles and interpretations, all the way through to the detailed quantitative reservoir and fluid predictions from seismic in the form of advanced DHI analysis, combined with their experience based prospecting intuitions.” He believes the most experienced prospect generators have not lost the “artistic and analogue and geological prospect fundamentals-thinking vision.”
We also discussed the need for everyone to improve their culture by reading good real-life stories like those published in AAPG’s “Giants” books and attend inspiring talks by oil finders (like the Discovery Thinking sessions – see related article in this issue). As a final comment on the “critical moment,” I think that dealing with it at decision time would be a more complex and demanding exercise now and in the future because of the growing role of sophisticated technology and the need to ensure a balance between the cultures. Maybe two or three main driving motivations would not be enough to reflect in the simplest way the mindset of the moment. Today’s managers must be able to ask their teams good key questions on many more matters than one had to do before.
The Character Factor
Exploration is a long-term commitment in all instances. One ambition of this article is to show that perseverance is an everlasting, much-needed requirement in the profession, with its weight on the acquisition of knowledge. Another obvious prerequisite of an efficient collaboration all along the chain of decision-making is trust.
Allow me to report on a conversation with one of my former exploration and production vice presidents in charge of the very final investment approval. I asked why he had agreed on all the projects I had presented to him.
He answered, “Because I could sense that you were convinced.”
Whatever technical advance and new facilities or challenges will come up in the practice, the human factor and leadership will still be needed in the end to take the final crucial step. Someone must create the dynamics and motivate the people to look for new opportunities. That leader must take action and be accountable for the decision and results that will follow, recognizing and rewarding success, and carrying alone the weight of failures.
There is no way to make sure that this factor is fully and ideally engaged. For instance, there is a very fine line between perseverance and obstinacy (drill one more well or abandon?). No magic recipe will give you a solution to help support risk-taking with a remaining high degree of risk and uncertainty. I came up with an inspiring thought on the matter with an illustration of the character factor, highlighted in a famous mountaineering event, whose story will finally give you an answer to the enigma of the figure at the beginning of the article.
This year marks the 67th anniversary of the first ascent of the famous Nose, the 3,000-foot vertical granitic rock face of El Capitan. Three climbers took one year to accomplish the feat, including 45 weeks of actual climbing because they had to work or study in-between. They used fixed ropes, going up and down and up again, pitch by pitch, hammering homemade pitons and bolts because modern equipment like nuts and friends did not exist at that time. They overcame terrifying overhangs, and they made it.
Wayne Merry, one of the climbers, gave an interview at the end of which he was asked to offer some brief advice. He said, “Recognize when you don’t feel up to something, otherwise, grit your teeth and go for it!”
Acknowledgements
Many thanks for their help to Gautier Baudot, André Coajou, Jean Gérard, Nancy House, Kevin McLachlan, Chris Moore, Matt Randolph, Deb Sacrey, Matthew Silverman, and to the late Jean-Jacques Biteau and Jean Ferrat.