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Future Trends in Frontier Exploration
- Publisher: European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers
- Source: Conference Proceedings, 81st EAGE Conference and Exhibition 2019, Jun 2019, Volume 2019, p.1 - 5
Abstract
Hydrocarbons are widely predicted to be a significant contributor to global energy resources for at least the next 30 years. Although the world is currently in a period of energy abundance and energy transition, ongoing demand for hydrocarbons requires new discoveries having low finding and recovery costs as well as a rapid time to peak production. This, in turn, would provide sufficient energy to continue to lift global society out of poverty and develop low-carbon futures. Attention is likely to return to deep-water conventional frontier exploration that can generate rapid returns, such as the recent successes in offshore Guyana, often involving the discovery of new plays. Success in new plays demands a full assessment of the geological risks. These can be facilitated through the application of Earth systems science and data science. The impact of these technologies can be explored on turbidites and carbonate buildups, which are the focus of current frontier exploration. For example, the occurrence of postulated carbonates on seismic data can be verified by machine-learning-assisted interpretations of seismic geometries and amplitudes and de-risked by paleoclimate models. The likelihood of turbidite system presence can be investigated by coupled source-to-sink and paleoclimate models.