GEOSCIENCES

Millennial challenge: expanding the search

As we enter the next millennium, is the world quickly approaching the peak of world oil production? According to Natural Resources Research (International Association for Mathematical Geology), article authors Duncan and Youngquist predict the peak of world oil production during 2007, with a non-OPEC peak during 2001. In their view, OPEC will peak a little later in 2010.

This means there is yet as much oil to produce as the industry has ever produced. It also means that there are a vast number of deposits yet to be found, many (most?) of them offshore. The geoscientist's challenge is to find those reserves in time to fuel consumer needs, thereby maintaining the world's economic stability, while new energy resources are developed.

The petroleum geoscientist's charge of finding and filling the world's energy needs will not change. What will change is the focus on oil resources. A shift will likely take place in the resource search within the next 10 years.

The new millennium will get its start on oil, but a wider richer mix of energy sources will be found and developed. Geoscientists will find the raw resources and our technology tools will continue to be used and perfected, though augmented by new refining processes. The world's need for energy is constantly expanding. Finding the necessary resources is the growing constant and the consummate geoscience challenge in the 21st Century.

So how do we find these remaining oil resources? Where and what do we look for? The search over the last century took geoscientists over most of the globe's land surface, and in the last 50 years has extended that search into the marine environment. This will continue - pushing tools and curiosity into the deepest offshore basins and into the deeper formations of land-locked basins. There are still scores of basins untouched by either seismic or drilling activity.

The first endeavors will be to continue evaluating and extending production from known oil-producing basins. Even in well-developed basins, new provinces and trends exist, just waiting for economics and ideas favorable to frontier exploration. This has occurred repeatedly:

• 1970's - North Sea shelf
• 1980's - West Africa deepwater
• 1990's - Brazilian continental shelf.

Geoscientists will search for large structures first and chase the obvious "sweet spots." But, lest the industry forgets, world-class reserves also rest in major stratigraphic features. Few are seeking these today unless they are in direct association with a traditional structure. None will risk a career-killing prospect in the current environment. The financial management running most companies is very risk-averse.

Sand piles are the current targets of choice - stacked deepwater fans with good seals. Is anyone looking for deepwater carbonate traps? Reefs, mounds, chalk, even buried karst zones, hold major reserves in established plays. We can always hope for serendipity (East Texas Field).