Diversified Oil and Gas Holdings (DVFI)

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More new tools for Sherlock


By Rhonda Duey, Exploration Editor


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As prospects get harder to find, technology developers try new techniques.

A lot of press releases find their way into my inbox on a regular basis. Most of these end up in the News and Analysis section of this magazine. But recently I’ve received three missives that I thought ought to be examined in more detail.
All of them have two things in common — they describe an unusual technology, and they promise to revolutionize oil and gas exploration. You, Gentle Reader, might wish to withhold judgment on that promise. But it’s always fun to investigate different ideas.
Pattern recognition
Pattern recognition software is not exactly a new concept in exploration, but a company called Productive Geoscience claims to have taught its technology to directly recognize hydrocarbons. Called N2Vision, the technology will be used to evaluate the petroleum and natural gas potential of selected offshore Lake Erie sands.
The core of the technology is a multilayer feed-forward neural network (MFFN) algorithm for pattern recognition. The algorithm is trained to recognized hydrocarbons by automatically establishing non-linear relationships between all attributes of the seismic field and data from existing wells. Since 1986, hundreds of exploration wells, mostly wildcats, drilled on locations evaluated with N2Vision technology have established a predictive success ratio greater than 85%, the press release claims. It lists Lukoil, Yukos, Surgutneftegas and Tatneft as past clients.
The present goal is to evaluate undeveloped acreage adjacent to a Talisman-operated horizontal well that has produced more than 120,000 bbl of oil since 2001. Tyche Energy Inc., a small independent, owns a 50% working interest in the land.
Tyche President and Chief Executive Officer Peter Rowe said, “This is an excellent opportunity for a junior such as ourselves to utilize ‘leading edge’ technology normally only available to the majors.” The Russian majors, that is.
Mineral dating
This just in — a new analytical technique could help to discover new oil reservoirs using mineral dating (I particularly enjoyed the liberal use of bold-faced type in this release.) Scientists at the University of Aberdeen have developed the method, which they claim can directly establish the timing of oil migration through
a sedimentary basin by observing the minute fluid inclusions within mineral cements. Prior to this technique, only indirect mineral dating of oil migration was possible. Now researchers are working to analyze oil accumulations in subsurface sandstone rocks between the Shetland Islands and the Faeroes in Scotland.
In the past geologists had to predict oil flow using indirect evidence or theoretical modeling of mineral deposits. The new approach has been proven to reveal when oil entered a subsurface reservoir, which helps to discern the temperature, composition and timing of past fluid flow.
The technique analyzes traces of oil in potassium feldspar, which occurs naturally as a cement in many reservoirs, to measure the amount of argon produced by radioactive decay of potassium, thus dating the occurrence of oil in the reservoir.
Full-tensor gravity gradiometry
Again, the industry has flirted with this technology, originally developed by the military, for several years.
Now a company called ARKeX is working with Chesapeake Energy to use its full-tensor gravity
gradiometer, FTGeX, to identify promising structures in the US Midcontinent. “This new technology promises to revolutionize oil and gas exploration,” we are assured. Apparently it’s revolutionizing Chesapeake’s oil and gas exploration — recently completed trials showed a 97% correlation to that company’s dry and producing wells.
The technology measures the rate of change to the gravity field by acquiring airborne gravity gradiometry, magnetic gradiometry and laser altimeter data over the area of interest. Acquired and processed by ARKeX using proprietary processing algorithms, the data provides detailed surface and subsurface information.
The first launch with Chesapeake took place in May 2005, and already demand is filling 75% of the ARKeX capacity. The company plans to build two more systems, the first of which will be launched at the end
of 2006.
While I find the breathless tones of these press releases amusing, I don’t mean to poke fun at the technologies themselves. As amazing as exploration technology already is, it’s obvious that creative and patient folks will continue to push the envelope.