There’s no denying that the energy mix must adjust to meet the sustainability goals of the energy transition. But while renewable energy sources are increasingly vital, conventional resources such as oil and gas remain indispensable in meeting global energy needs. Most of these resources are currently sourced from mature fields, underscoring the importance of exploration to discover new reserves and replace declining ones. As economic development accelerates and tech—particularly in areas such as AI—advances, global energy consumption continues to rise significantly. Exploration is crucial to satisfying this growing demand.
Exploration also encompasses the likes of geothermal energy and rare minerals. These resources are essential for advancing the electrification of society and supporting renewable energy tech. Not to mention that exploration plays a pivotal role in identifying suitable subsurface locations for carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS). By finding and developing pore spaces for CO2 storage, exploration can make a significant contribution to efforts around emissions reduction and the mitigation of climate change impacts.
As the energy industry strives for a more responsible future, exploration will be a linchpin in balancing conventional and new energy sources to meet the world’s needs. This evolving role highlights the dynamic nature of exploration and its significance in the global energy equation.
The technological revolution in exploration
Exploration is experiencing a technological revolution, with cutting-edge tools and data-driven techniques redefining how we discover and evaluate resources. These advancements not only enhance efficiency but also expand the potential for success in exploration projects, making them more strategic and reducing uncertainty.
- Full waveform inversion (FWI)—This algorithm-based technology converts seismic data into detailed subsurface models. By continuously refining its focus, FWI provides high-fidelity subsurface images that are invaluable for exploration. Imagine trying to take a clear picture of something hidden underground; FWI acts like a camera that adjusts focus based on feedback, creating accurate underground images.
- Elastic full waveform inversion (EFWI)—Building upon FWI, EFWI offers a breakthrough in resolving complex subsurface structures, setting new standards in exploration accuracy. This evolution enables more precise imaging, particularly in challenging geological environments, for better-informed subsurface analysis.
- Ocean bottom nodes (OBN)—OBN technology revolutionizes data acquisition by placing sensors on the ocean floor, capturing sound wave echoes with unparalleled detail. This method is especially effective in challenging geological environments, such as those with salt formations, and enables comprehensive subsurface imaging. You can think of OBN as placing high-tech microphones on the ocean floor to listen to echoes of sound waves sent from the surface , capturing detailed data from various angles and distances.
- Hybrid optics and distributed acoustic sensing (DAS)—These technologies facilitate continuous monitoring and data acquisition, particularly in CCUS projects. Hybrid optics function as sensors to measure seismic information, creating detailed subsurface images and tracking changes over time. DAS provides real-time data, enhancing our ability to monitor and adjust exploration efforts dynamically.
These innovations don’t just ensure we get the most out of newly acquired seismic data, but they also enable exploration teams to extract maximum value from legacy datasets. These technologies enable companies to reduce the environmental footprint of their exploration activities by optimizing resource utilization and minimizing emissions from data acquisition processes. It’s an approach that offers multiple benefits—from maximizing returns on previous data acquisition investments to reducing the environmental impact of exploration.
Navigating complexity with data management and automation
The huge volume of data that’s generated when using these exploration techniques has ushered in a new era of data management and automation. The latter plays a pivotal role in streamlining processes, enhancing efficiency, and reducing costs. AI is increasingly being adopted to process and interpret information faster, making decisions more data-driven and minimizing reliance on manual user testing.
Automation is particularly critical in managing the vast datasets involved in CCUS monitoring. By automating data processing and interpretation, companies can more efficiently handle large datasets. This is essential to maintaining the pace of exploration while ensuring that operations remain cost-effective and environmentally responsible.
Mature vs. frontier basins: Strategic choices in conventional exploration
In conventional exploration, companies face the strategic challenge of choosing whether to explore mature or frontier basins, each presenting unique benefits and challenges when it comes to core elements of the process.
- Infrastructure and monetization: Mature basins benefit from existing infrastructure, enabling quicker monetization of discoveries. Infrastructure-led exploration (ILX) also brings with it the ability to tie new fields or discoveries to existing facilities, expediting time to first oil or gas production. Conversely, frontier basins often lack infrastructure, requiring substantial investments to develop new facilities and longer lead times to monetization.
- Knowledge and data: Mature basins have extensive existing knowledge and data reserves, making exploration more predictable and lower risk. In contrast, frontier basins often present challenges due to limited data availability, requiring innovative approaches to gather subsurface information and manage uncertainty.
- Materiality of discoveries: Frontier basins offer the potential for larger, more significant discoveries when compared to mature basins, where opportunities for substantial new finds may be limited. This potential in frontier areas can compensate for the longer time to monetization and can be an attractive prospect for larger organizations, such as international oil companies (IOCs), who have been increasingly willing to explore deepwater or ultra-deepwater regions in recent years.
- Technological application: Technologies like OBN are particularly useful in frontier basins, providing reliable subsurface imaging and reducing cycle time by enabling quicker access to high-quality data. This technology is critical for optimizing exploration strategies in areas with complex geological structures.
- Environmental sustainability: Frontier exploration offers unique opportunities to integrate sustainable practices from the outset by developing new sites and facilities with the latest, most responsible tech and equipment available and potentially leading to a producing field that is net-zero.
That said, efforts are being made to reduce the environmental footprint of exploration activities overall, especially given the increasing regulatory pressure the industry faces. Using techniques such as OBN, for example, which require fewer vessels for data acquisition, supports this by minimizing a project’s transport emissions. Another strategy involves utilizing existing legacy data to complement new acquisitions, which reduces the need for new data acquisition and, therefore, minimizes environmental impact.
New energy frontiers beyond oil and gas
Exploration is neither dead nor limited to oil and gas. As its reach expands further into new realms such as geothermal energy and rare minerals, it occupies a key role in the transition to a more responsible energy mix. The exploration of geothermal resources involves geophysical methods—both seismic and nonseismic—that detect fractures and heat conduits essential for energy generation. This is pivotal for developing renewable energy systems that can provide reliable power.
Additionally, the mining of rare minerals is integral to the supply chain for renewable energy tech. Minerals like copper, gold, and lithium are vital components for solar panels, batteries, and other technologies that store energy from renewable sources. Many of the same exploration technologies originally developed for use in oil and gas can help identify and extract these valuable minerals, supporting the electrification of society and the broader transition to more sustainable energy systems.
The people, passion, and promise of exploration
Successful exploration hinges not only on technology but also on the passion and expertise of the individuals involved. Exploration teams are characterized by their enthusiasm for subsurface geology, geophysics, and the cutting-edge tech they employ. This passion drives continuous innovation and improvement, enabling teams to tackle increasingly complex challenges with creativity and ingenuity.
Teams across research, engineering, portfolio management, operations, and new ventures must work together, leveraging diverse expertise to advance exploration capabilities. Their willingness to adopt new tech, such as machine learning and AI, both enhances subsurface understanding and improves data utilization.
In other words, exploration is not only alive but thriving, poised to play a significant role in shaping the energy landscape of the future. The convergence of advanced tech, strategic decision making, and a passionate expert population offers a promising path forward. Exploration holds immense potential, but it will only be realized by harnessing the passion of those who work tirelessly to understand the subsurface. Together, we can navigate the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, paving the way for a balanced energy mix for decades to come.
