Exploration, Technology and Business

Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Inmarsat Conference Centre


Our first Finding Petroleum Conference - on 20/21 January - focussed on Exploration and Technology, and how they combine to make companies successful, successful at their chosen Business. In planning the two days, we considered four threads:

1. Which companies are being successful, especially in Exploration?
2. Where are they being successful; or where might they be successful in the future?
3. What does this say about Technology; which technologies are being 'pulled on' by successful explorers?
4. Where are the technology companies that will enjoy future success?

That's the programme we put together, badgering lots of folk to give a presentation, calling in one or two favours, and we thank all the presenters for stepping up to the plate.

With only two or three exceptions, presenters were also willing to allow us to offer downloads of their presentations and we thank them for that too.

Day One

8:15 Arrivals and Registrations

9:10 David Bamford - Director Finding Petroleum Welcome & Introduction David Bamford is 63. He is a non-executive director at Tullow Oil plc and has various roles with Parkmead Group plc, PARAS Ltd and New Eyes Exploration Ltd, and runs his own consultancy. He writes regular articles for OilVoice and ROGTEC and is a co-founder of Finding Petroleum. He retired from BP in 2003, after a 23 year career spent initially in research & technology, then the geophysics function, business unit leadership, and finally BP's global exploration programme. Finding Petroleum Finding Petroleum was established to help the oil and gas industry network, and stay up to date on the latest technological developments. It does this via hosting regular events, distributing their colour magazine - Digital Energy Journal, and with an online social network of nearly 700 members. More...

9:20 Oswald Clint - Senior Analyst Bernstein Research Who are the successful explorers today? Learn what it takes to be at the forefront of exploration. Dr Clint joined Sanford C. Bernstein in 2004 and was part of the Energy Team with Neil McMahon covering the Global Integrated Oil sector. Currently he is the Senior Research Analyst covering the European E&P and Russian Oil & Gas sectors. The Bernstein Energy franchise has become well known due to both the provocative commentary on the commodities and oil stocks, as well as the innovative research that forms the core of their frequent publications. Previously, he worked as an accountant and consultant for KPMG covering energy, gas, and chemical sectors. Dr Clint received his PhD in Geophysics from University College London where he specialised in sub-surface rock physics and is also a Chartered Accountant. Bernstein Research Sanford C. Bernstein is widely recognized as Wall Street's premier sell-side research firm. Their research is sought out by leading investment managers around the world, and they are annually ranked at the very top of acknowledged arbiters. In independent surveys of major institutional clients, Bernstein's research is ranked #1 for overall quality, industry knowledge, most trusted, best detailed financial analysis, major company studies, most useful valuation frameworks, best original research, and most willing to challenge management. In Institutional Investor's 2008 annual client survey, the leading survey by which analysts in our industry are evaluated, 100% of our U.S. Analysts were recognized as among the best in their respective fields -- more than any other firm on Wall Street. More...

10:00 Peter Sharland - Managing Director Neftex Petroleum Consultants Integrating and visualising global geoscience data – demo of an emerging earth model Peter Sharland is both Managing Director of Neftex and an active member of the technical team. His role mixes company management with technical interpretation. Peter co-founded Neftex in 2001 after leaving LASMO following the company's acquisition by ENI. He has specific responsibility to continue to grow the company. Peter has worked on several global geoscience projects with different companies and clients (world petroleum systems, KSF, exploration renewal, YTF etc.), as well as project work in the Middle East, North Africa and the Former Soviet Union (Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Caspian Region generally). Peter was lead author of the book Arabian Plate Sequence Stratigraphy. Peter is in demand as a corporate advisor and for his technical skills. Peter received his BSc in Geology from London University in 1983, and has over 20 years of industry experience with BP, LASMO, LL&E, and as a geoscience consultant. He was brought up in West Africa, and his interests include the evolution of Man, astrobiology and the future of the energy industry. Neftex Petroleum Consultants Neftex is completing the build of the first commercially-available Earth Model to be constructed using high-frequency sequence stratigraphic principals. This work started in mid-2003, is currently supported by 15 oil companies and has so far taken some 200 man-years of effort. In addition, Neftex provide G&G consulting services utilising similar interpretation technologies. Both these divisions are supported by our Technology team who ensure maximum efficiency across our business. More...

10:30 Coffee and Tea

11:00 Chris Matchette-Downes - VP Business Development MD Oil Finding hydrocarbons in East Africa & the western Indian Ocean Chris is a Petroleum geological consultant and owner of MDOIL Ltd. He was also a founder member of EAX and was the Vice President of Business Development, East Africa Exploration from early 2005 until the end of 2009. Chris experience includes ten year's geological geochemical scientific / technical experience, including 5 years at the wellsite; fifteen year's global E&P business development, UK/Europe, Africa, Near, Middle and Far East, Australia and North and Central America & Sri Lanka. High lights include building a G&G team together to bid on UKCS blocks; securing PSA option offshore Tanzania and South Africa; helping to secure further Western Indian Ocean assets in Seychelles, Madagascar and Kenya; setting up Jamaica's ongoing first oil and gas bid round. Running for TPDC the 3rd Tanzanian licence round; building new petroleum geochemical understanding for East Africa and co-founder of EAX and MDOIL ltd. MSc & BSc. MD Oil MDOIL's purpose is to assist overseas governments promote their neglected oil and gas exploration acreage in frontier areas to international oil and gas companies by; the analysis of vintage data sets; providing new geochemical and geological analysis; new geological understanding and modern digital data packages for license to oil companies. More...

11:30 Peter Hutchison - Managing Director Scotforth Ltd Finding Petroleum From Space: RSDD-H Exploration Surveys Peter graduated from Aberdeen University, Scotland in 1973 with a First Class Honours in Geology. He joined British Petroleum and worked worldwide in a range of senior exploration and management positions. In 1988 Peter graduated from the Sloan Program at Stanford University, with a Masters in Management Science. In 1993 Peter set up his own company and has worked since then as an international consultant to the oil and gas industry. In 1997 he set up the initial joint venture with BPC-93 in Belarus before Scotforth was incorporated in 2000. Scotforth Ltd Scotforth's unique "RSDD-H" exploration surveys provide a rapid, low cost prospectivity assessment of play fairways, licence blocks and conventional prospects and leads in a wide range of onshore terrains. The track record of RSDD-H surveys across numerous basins and countries has illustrated their effectiveness in identifying exploration prospectivity and ranking exploration lands. More...

12:00 Mark Davies - Chief Scientist ARKeX Full Tensor Gravity Gradiometry as an exploration tool Mark is a geoscientist with worldwide experience in the interpretation of geophysical data. He has previously worked for ARK Geophysics, the Hawaiian Institute Geophysics and Planetology and acted as a consultant for a wide range of oil, gas and mining companies, advising them on their geophysical exploration challenges. His particular expertise is in the application of potential field data to exploration. Mark has also written and presented a series of television and radio programmes in the US and UK on geoscience topics. He has a PhD and a DEA in Applied Geophysics. ARKeX ARKeX provides airborne and marine geophysical surveys for the oil and gas exploration industry. It specialises in Gravity Gradient Imaging (GGI), which measures minute variations in the earth''s gravitational field to help image subsurface structures. GGI has a much higher bandwidth and delivers a high resolution image than conventional gravity. More...

12:00 Lunch

13:30 Dr Keith Myers - Founding Partner Richmond Energy Partners Mid-cap exploration performance 2008-2009 After completing a Ph. D. at Imperial College, Keith joined BP in 1987 as a geologist. Following a variety of technical roles, he became a Senior Commercial Advisor in 1996 when he led several major negotiations for new business access as well as Business Strategies for BP’s business in West Africa and BP’s Strategic Alliance with Statoil. Since 2000 Keith has been an advisor to numerous energy companies on strategy and partnership issues Keith founded Richmond Energy Partners in 2006 to provide independent advice to investors in smaller oil and gas companies. Richmond Energy advise some of the largest funds and institutions investing in the sector. Keith takes a keen interest in oil sector governance and served on the organising committee of the Good Governance of the National Petroleum Sector Project at the think tank Chatham House. Richmond Energy Partners Richmond Energy Partners was founded in 2006 and provides independent advice to investors in smaller oil and gas companies. It provides advice to some of the largest funds and institutions investing in oil and gas. Dr Myers has a Phd from Imperial College, London and joined BP as a geologist in 1987, eventually becoming senior commercial advisor at BP in 1996, leading negotiations for new business access for BP in Angola and in its strategic alliance with Statoil. More...

14:00 Bente Bue - General Manager IPRES Integrated approach to upstream decision making Bente Bue has many years of experience from various Norwegian oil companies. She started in exploration, moving on to project manager for a broad range of new ventures evaluations as well as being responsible for asset portfolios . Late 2007 she joined IPRES as a senior adviser, with a remit to improve the IPRISK decision support tools with associated work processes, and manage/facilitate customer projects using the IPRISK software. Bente holds a Cand.Real degree from Institute of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Norway. IPRES IPRES, established in 1995, develops and markets the IP Suite of software tools and offers a full range of complementary services to the upstream petroleum industry. Throughout our history we have been dedicated to improving decision work processes for major upstream investments by using an integrated approach. By implementing and using our tools, we also help oil companies to quantify attainable production goals and support their resource management processes. Moving projects through the decision gates to execution is central to the work performed by the specialist disciplines in an oil and gas company. Decisions are made that involve major capital investments and focusing on maximising project and portfolio value should be well worth the efforts! IP Suite allows decision situations to be evaluated for any type of project along the entire value chain, from exploration through to development and production optimisation. The tools are easy to use, yet flexible, and handle all important risks and uncertainties: reservoir, drilling, facilities, operations, commercial and fiscal. The modelling approach involves all team members, improving collaboration and the review process. Consistency, comparability and full data capture are ensured; the pre-requisites for better decision-making. The IP Suite of integrated petroleum tools covers: * IPRISKwell for well planning * IPRISKfield for field development planning * IPRISKforecast for production forecasting * IPRESOURCE for resource/reserve management IP Suite helps you to improve the general work processes and handling of complex projects. You can also choose to outsource whole projects or parts of projects to IPRES, including quality assurance of data input, decision trees and modelling, as well as analyses of results and recommendations. We undertake projects as single investment projects or within a portfolio context, or as part of the annual resource/reserve management process. More...

14:30 Hamish Wilson - Principal RPS Energy Exploration Risk Management Mr Wilson was previously founder and managing director of Paras Consulting, which was acquired by RPS Energy in October 2008. He worked as an exploration geologist at BP covering the North Sea, South East Asia and Alaska, and then became BP's project manager of corporate database development. RPS Energy RPS Energy provides a range of technical, commercial and project management support services to the international energy industry, covering geoscience, engineering and HS&E, with offices around the world. More...

15:00 Coffee and Tea

15:30 Andrew Lodge - Exploration Director Premier Oil Creating value from rift basin exploration-SE Asia story Andrew Lodge joined Premier’s Board as Exploration Director in April 2009 from Hess where he was Vice President, Exploration, responsible for Europe, North Africa, Asia and Australia for nine years. Previously, he was Vice President, Exploration, Asset Manager and Group Exploration Advisor for BHP Petroleum, based in London and Australia. Prior to joining BHP Petroleum, Andrew worked for BP as a geophysicist. He has an honours degree in Mining Geology from the University of Wales and a Masters in Applied Geophysics from the University of Leeds. He is a fellow of the Geological Society. Premier Oil Premier Oil plc is a leading independent oil and gas company with producing interests in the UK, Indonesia, Pakistan and Mauritania. Exploration and appraisal is ongoing in the UK, South and South East Asia and Africa. More...

16:00 Gareth Smith - Managing Director Exprodat Spatial Integration at the basin and play level Gareth Smith is Managing Director of Exprodat Consulting. Prior to Exprodat, Gareth worked for Landmark Graphics as a technical consultant, and for Sun Oil as a Geologist. Gareth has worked in the E&P industry for over 20 years. Exprodat Exprodat, based in London, provides Geographical Information Service (GIS) consulting and software to the oil and gas industry. Its Team-GIS Acreage Analyst Tool enables oil and gas companies to analyse different acreage (for example, when consider which license blocks to bid for), gathering all the available information into an easy to read map. More...

16:30 Paul Maton - Principal Consultant Energistics Collaborative technologies for exploration Dr Paul Maton is a principal consultant for Energistics, the not for profit organization based in Houston which develops standards for data exchange in oil and gas, including PRODML for sharing production data, WITSML for sharing well data and RESQML for transfer of geological and reservoir models. Members include Baker Hughes, BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, ONGC, Saudi Aramco, Schlumberger, Shell, Statoil, Total and Weatherford. Energistics Energistics is a not for profit organisation to help facilitate information sharing and business process integration in the oil and gas industry. It has 97 members, including all of the oil majors and major oil service companies. It is also manages the WITSML and PRODML data exchange standards for drilling and production, and provides a neutral forum for collaborative learning and sharing. More...

Day Two

8:15 Arrivals and Registrations

9:15 David Bamford - Director Finding Petroleum Welcome and Introduction David Bamford is 63. He is a non-executive director at Tullow Oil plc and has various roles with Parkmead Group plc, PARAS Ltd and New Eyes Exploration Ltd, and runs his own consultancy. He writes regular articles for OilVoice and ROGTEC and is a co-founder of Finding Petroleum. He retired from BP in 2003, after a 23 year career spent initially in research & technology, then the geophysics function, business unit leadership, and finally BP's global exploration programme. Finding Petroleum Finding Petroleum was established to help the oil and gas industry network, and stay up to date on the latest technological developments. It does this via hosting regular events, distributing their colour magazine - Digital Energy Journal, and with an online social network of nearly 700 members. More...

9:20 Angus McCoss - Exploration Director Tullow Oil Tullow - Geology before geography Angus McCoss was appointed to the Board in December 2006. He joined Tullow in April 2006 as General Manager Exploration. A geologist with a PhD, he has 21 years of wide-ranging exploration experience, working primarily with Shell in Africa, Europe, China, South America and the Middle East. He has held a number of senior positions within Shell including Americas Regional Vice President Exploration and General Manager of Exploration onshore and offshore Nigeria. Tullow Oil Tullow Oil plc is one of the largest independent oil and gas exploration companies in Europe. The Group has 86 licences in 22 countries, with operations in Africa, Europe, South Asia and South America. Tullow is headquartered in London and employs over 540 people world-wide. Current production is 60,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd). In 2008 the Group drilled 99 exploration, appraisal and development wells, which included multi-well campaigns in Ghana and Uganda. The group achieved a 77% exploration success rate with 17 out of 22 successful wells in 2008. More...

10:00 Andrew Zolnai - Sales Director Interactive Net Mapping Web 1-2-3 for Petroleum Andrew Zolnai is sales director at Interactive Net Mapping, a UK company which helps the oil and gas industry put together interactive maps of their exploration and production activities. Mr Zolnai was previously a business process consultant at Agip KCO, Milan; sales director at Petris; marketing manager at ESRI; and senior consultant at Landmark. He has a blog at blog.zolnai.ca Interactive Net Mapping Interactive Net Mapping is a privately owned company with a team of technical and commercial specialists in producing WebGIS solutions. With extensive industry and technical IT experience emphasis is placed on building and retaining the trust of their clients, and leveraging this reputation to grow their services and expand the business. Their core business is the delivery of professional and cost-effective interactive WebGIS mapping services to the Private and Public Sector with the first product focussed at the Oil and Gas Upsteam industry or more commonly referred to as Exploration and Production (E&P). More...

10:30 Coffee and Tea

11:00 Greg Herrera - Partner, Aberdeen Office Energy Ventures The parallels of technology investment and exploration success Formerly with Simmons & Company, MRMD C, Rototec, Gyrodata. RGIT HND Mechanical & Offshore Engineering, The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. RGIT BENG Engineering Technology, The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. Board member of Ziebel and Sigma Offshore. Energy Ventures Established in 2002, Energy Ventures manages/advises four venture funds with a total committed capital of NOK 2.3 billion. The company is headquartered in Stavanger, Norway, with offices in Aberdeen and Houston. The company's professionals have extensive industry, investment, transaction and stewardship experience as well as a wide-ranging network in the oil and gas industry. More...

11:30 Cristina Puig - Senior Technology Analyst ITF ITF Delivering New Technology- A proven Process Cristina Puig is senior technology analyst at ITF, a not for profit organisation owned by oil operators and service companies, which aims to identify industry needs for new technology and encourage companies to develop it. So far it has faciliated 151 new oilfield technology projects to the market, securing direct ITF membership funding of more than £45 million. ITF ITF is a not for profit organisation owned by 22 major oil and gas global operators and service companies, with the aim of bridging the gap between the industry and technology innovators. Particular topic areas include seismic resolution, complex reservoirs, cost-effective drilling and intervention, subsea, maximising production, integrity management, and environmental performance. More...

12:00 Gordon Stove - Managing Director Adrok Innovative geophysical technology for prognosing location of subsurface hydrocarbons before drilling Gordon Stove has over 10 years'experience in developing and applying geophysical technologies. He is co-founder and shareholder of Adrok Ltd and has helped in the development of Adrok's intellectual property portfolio. He has a BSc (Hons)Geography degree from the University of Edinburgh. Adrok Adrok Group, based in Edinburgh, provides subsurface imaging and mapping solutions, using its atomic dielectric resonance (ADR) scanner, to help understand the structure and content of the subsurface. The same technology has been used to analyse and classify blood, and image the human body. More...

12:30 Lunch

13:30 Hamish Wilson - Principal RPS Energy Conjugate margins of the North Atlantic Mr Wilson was previously founder and managing director of Paras Consulting, which was acquired by RPS Energy in October 2008. He worked as an exploration geologist at BP covering the North Sea, South East Asia and Alaska, and then became BP's project manager of corporate database development. RPS Energy RPS Energy provides a range of technical, commercial and project management support services to the international energy industry, covering geoscience, engineering and HS&E, with offices around the world. More...

14:00 Dr. Alan Gibbs - Technical Director Midland Valley Exploration Innovation in thinking or more technology? What makes the difference? The founder of Midland Valley, Alan deals with global leadership and strategy along with MVE's technical profile and business objectives. Alan has worked as an academic, senior specialist in a state company and is founder and director of Midland Valley. He is responsible for a number of seminal publications in the application of structural geology to oil and gas exploration and production. Over the last 20 years he has been involved in projects globally in several cases seeing projects through several technical and commercial cycles. As a decision maker he has steered technical and commercial development of an international technical group and in managing change. Midland Valley Exploration Midland Valley Exploration, based in Glasgow, claims to be the world leader in structural geology modelling and analysis in the oil and gas industry. It provides software and consulting services. More...

14:30 Evgeny Landa - Geomage MultiFocusing – Beyond Conventional Seismic Processing Evgeny Landa received a Master degree (1972) in geophysics from Novosibirsk University (USSR) where he worked in geophysical service company as a research geophysicist between 1972-1981. After immigrating to Israel in 1981, Landa started to work for Geophysical Institute of Israel and received his Ph. D. degree in geophysics from Tel Aviv University (1986) . In 1987-1988 and 1989-1990 he worked as a postdoctoral scholar and visiting scientist at the Institute Physic de Globe in Paris and Elf Aquitaine in Pau. Coming back to Israel he was appointed Head of Seismic Department and R&D of the Geophysical Institute of Israel (1991-2002). Landa is one of the authors of the GeoDepth software package which was developed in Paradigm under his supervision (1992). Starting from 2002 Landa works in Pau (France) as a Director of OPERA (Applied Geophysical Research Group). His research interest include seismic data processing, velocity model stimation and imaging. Geomage Geomage provides cutting-edge seismic processing solutions to the oil and gas exploration and production industry. Using its innovative, macro-model-independent, Multifocusing(tm) technology, Geomage ensures the highest quality seismic imaging results. Multifocusing(tm) ensures: - More knowledge from your data - Unprecedented imaging sharpness - Increased field development efficiency Multifocusing(tm) can be applied without pre-existing knowledge of the subsurface model. The data describes itself, and does not require the construction of user-defined models. More...

15:00 Coffee and Tea

15:30 Richard Swarbrick - Managing Director Ikon GeoPressure Low pressures to high pressures – how regional overpressure mapping helps find trapped hydrocarbons Before founding GeoPressure Technology, Dr Richard Swarbrick completed a PhD in sedimentology/tectonics at Cambridge University, and subsequently worked as a geologist for Mobil for ten years from 1979. During that time he worked in exploration and production assignments in both the UK and USA. In 1989 he began teaching petroleum geology and related courses at the University of Durham where he continues to be involved in research and teaching. Between 1994 and 2001, Dr Richard Swarbrick was also the principal investigator of GeoPOP (GEOsciences Project into OverPressure), a multi-disciplinary research group funded by 16 oil/gas companies. Richard has taught courses in many of oil centres around the world, either as open courses or in-house training companies. He consults widely and continues to present conference papers and publish articles relating to sub-surface pressures. Ikon GeoPressure Ikon Science is a geoscience technology company committed to bringing innovative geoscience technology to the upstream oil and gas industry. As specialists in subsurface workflows, we are developing and delivering quantitative prediction and reservoir characterisation to customers with a fresh and flexible approach. With our industry-leading software, The RokDoc® System, and our responsive teams, we are dedicated to providing you with excellence, by combining innovation and scientific rigour on every project. Leading a journey to discover and share new technology, products and know how, we deliver results and value on time, every time. Ikon Science, founded in 2001, employs over 80 people and has offices in London, Durham, Edinburgh, Houston, Boulder, Lagos, Kuala Lumpur and Perth Western Australia. More...

16:00 Jim Harris - Fugro Robertson Global palaeogeography and palaeo-Earth systems: source and reservoir facies prediction and the reduction of exploration risk in frontier basins. Application to the Kara/Yamal Basin in the Russian Arctic Fugro NPA's core strength is its provision of satellite data services to the highest standards of quality and customer support. Fugro NPA Limited was initially established in 1972 by Nigel Press becoming Nigel Press Associates Limited in 1977, until its recent acquisition by the Fugro Group in April 2008. FNPA has over 35 years of world leading expertise and independent experience in Earth observation, remote sensing and digital cartographic information. FNPA is supported by highly skilled staff and powerful digital processing technologies offering comprehensive services from satellite data acquisition and image processing, through interpretation and validation, to production of derived maps and reports. Fugro NPA Offshore Exploration Services cover both exploration (primarily offshore seep detection) and production (pollution monitoring) and are based on a database of over 10,000 interpreted SAR scenes, contained in a single ARC-GIS database, the Global Offshore Seeps Database (GOSD). This is the foremost database in the service industry that is the result of a continuous 15 years period of acquisition and interpretation. Satellite seep detection is now a routine input into most frontier exploration programmes as multiple pass imagery now allows high-confidence repeat oil seeps to be identified in any water depth or basin setting offshore. GOSD now covers c.80% of the world's offshore basins. High ranked oil seeps have been mapped over all the world's current hot spots including the circum Arctic, the East African lakes, West African Bight, deep water Santos and the entire Gulf of Mexico, US and Mexican sectors. SAR data are also being increasingly used for pre and post-production environmental monitoring of oil production platforms as well as tracking illegal dumping and bilge cleaning in the international shipping lanes. However, Fugro NPA is particularly noted for expertise in geological and oceanographic studies for hydrocarbon exploration. The company has experience globally and has a comprehensive onshore project database covering most of Africa, Southern Eurasia and Arabia, and are presently developing a similar portfolio for SE Asia and South America. Having recently completed a detailed interpretation of Kurdistan, Southern Turkey, Syria and the Levant, Fugro NPA continue to add further detail using cross section construction and fracture analysis. The other current project focus concentrates on a growing collection of data from SE Asia. Since its establishment, Fugro NPA has maintained close relationships with all the satellite data suppliers and agreed distribution contracts for all major satellites as they have become commercial. These contacts have enabled Fugro NPA to specialise in extracting useful information globally, with a broad spectrum of remote sensing techniques in a range of sectors including Oil and Gas, Mining, Environment/Environmental change, Risk Management and Engineering. More...