2002.03.31
There are a lot of really good geoscience talks in town
this month. That's almost enough to make me glad I live in Houston.
(No it isn't.)
I was thinking about John Ewing again, remembering
when I first meet him about 13 years ago. We were
participating in a seismic expedition off the coast of New Jersey.
And I realize: I went on a seismic cruise and shared a cabin with
the inventor of the seismic air gun!
Of course, John conducted hundreds of seismic surveys over the course of
his decades long career, so it's not exactly an exclusive honor. But
still, it's pretty cool.
2002.03.29
Oil and Gas International:
Houston
primed for biggest OTC yet.
"... the new Reliant Center, an enormous new complex in Houston's Reliant
Park, with 1.4 million sq ft of conference and exhibition space ... will
be OTC's new home."
Houston Chronicle:
Veritas
to get better deal.
"The exchange rate involving the stock transaction will be changed to
favor Veritas, it will get control of the board of directors, and its
chief executive will be CEO of the new company, among other things."
2002.03.27
Oil & Gas Journal:
EIA
sees developing nations as key force in rising energy demand.
"World energy consumption is projected to increase by 60% over the next
2 decades, according to an annual report released Mar. 26 by the US
Energy Information Administration" ...
"Oil is expected to remain the world's dominant source of primary energy
consumption, with a 40% share of total energy consumption during
1999-2020.... World oil consumption is projected to increase from 75
million b/d in 1999 to 119 million b/d in 2020, for an annualized growth
rate of 2.2%."
Oil Online:
MMS
proposes final lease sale plan.
"The Minerals Management Service is proposing to schedule 20 oil and gas
lease sales in eight outer continental shelf planning areas in the Gulf
of Mexico and off Alaska as part of the new Five-Year Leasing Program
effective 2002-2007."
2002.03.26
The Washington Post:
Energy
Contacts Disclosed.
"Energy
Secretary Spencer Abraham met with 36 representatives of business
interests and many campaign contributors while developing
President Bush's energy policy, and he held no meetings with
conservation or consumer groups, documents released last night
show."
Oil & Gas Journal:
Judge
allows Minerals Management Service to reopen web site.
"Last December the MMS website was included in the judge's order to
shut down public access to most internet web sites and e-mail run by
Interior. US District Judge Royce C. Lambert ordered the shutdown in
response to an Indian trust dispute in which the plaintiffs argued
Interior web site security was lacking."
Oil and Gas International:
Anadarko
seismic shoot opposed by Wyoming enviro group.
"Because it is a popular roadless area, where vehicles are not permitted,
the company intends to fly in portable drilling equipment by helicopter
and then to bore some 80 holes for placement of explosives 60 ft deep to
serve as the seismic charges."
Oil & Gas Journal:
IEA
lowers slightly its global oil demand forecast for 2002.
2002.03.21
Houston Chronicle:
Mexico's
economy makes that nation our 51st state.
"Before NAFTA, in the 1980s, Mexico's big export was oil. In the 1990s,
manufacturing pushed oil aside, Gilmer said. Last year, Mexico earned
six times as many dollars from manufactured products as it did from
oil.
"And the huge majority of Mexico's exports, 87 percent last year, went
to the United States."
Houston Chronicle (third story down):
PGS may
sell rigs if merger plan fails.
"`Such a sale won't solve PGS' long-term problem of too much debt,' said
Rachid Bendriss, chief analyst at brokerage Carnegie in Oslo, who rates
the stock a sell."
Houston Chronicle:
Push to
discover more natural gas aids offshore bids.
"For Wednesday's sale, the federal Minerals Management Service raised
royalty relief for production of deep-gas deposits in the shallow shelf
areas of the Gulf. No royalties will be collected on the first 20
billion cubic feet of gas produced from a well drilled 15,000 feet or
deeper below sea level. The relief ends if gas prices reach $5,
compared with last year's cutoff level of $3.50."
2002.03.20
Oil & Gas Journal:
Companies
bid $363.2 million for central gulf leases, down from last year.
Oil and Gas International:
Shallow
water centerpiece of US Gulf Sale 182.
"The MMS' Chris Oynes, who announced the bids, said it was surprising how
many major oil companies bid for shallow water blocks. Eugene Island Block
159, for example, received seven bids, the most for any block in the sale.
Phillips Petroleum had the highest bid of the sale at US$17.4 million for
Green Canyon Block 199."
Oil and Gas International:
Russia
is bleeding oil, can't keep pledge despite renewal.
"[Russia] has to reduce the domestic glut or suffer the consequences,
for although world oil prices have been reduced this year by 26%, the
price of oil in Russia is less than a quarter the price on foreign
markets and sometimes do not even equaling production costs."
Oil & Gas Journal:
MMS
announces slightly modified 5-year lease schedule.
"MMS still also plans to hold annual central and western gulf sales and
eastern gulf sales in 2003 and 2005. About 84% of federal oil and gas
revenues are produced from OCS leases, according to MMS."
> Outer Continental Shelf.
2002.03.17
I was speaking with Manik Talwani yesterday, and he mentioned that he
would be visiting Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institute soon. I asked if he would see John Ewing
while he was there.
He told me John died in November.
From the WHOI obituary:
"Considered the inventor of the air gun as a sound source for marine
seismology, John Ewing used air guns to study the structure of sediments
and oceanic crust around the world."
John Ewing was a wonderful scientist and a great human being. It
was truly an honor to have known him.
Bloomberg News:
Oil
companies ordered to survey, sidestep shipwrecks on Gulf floor.
"The rules will help prevent mishaps like one that occurred in late 2000,
when Exxon laid an 8-inch steel pipe across a sunken ship believed to
have been built in the early 1800s.... The new rules may mean more
business for firms that conduct the underwater surveys industry officials
said." ...
"Federal officials estimate the Gulf of Mexico may hold as many as
500 undiscovered shipwrecks of historic significance. Since the early
1980s, when the government first began requiring Gulf drillers to do
archaeological surveys, oil and gas companies have discovered about 200
wrecks."
2002.03.15
WSJ (subscription):
Persian
Gulf Oil Is Still Critical, But U.S. Grows Less Dependent.
"The Middle East, to be sure, holds a dominant two-thirds of the world's
proven reserves, and the region will retain considerable influence even
if production elsewhere continues to grow. Saudi Arabia has 25% of the
Middle Eastern reserves, or 250 billion barrels. Together, Saudi Arabia,
Iran and Iraq are responsible for about 20% of world production." ...
"American production peaked in 1970 at 9.6 million barrels a day and has
shrunk since then. Today the U.S. holds less than 5% of the world's oil
reserves and produces fewer than six million barrels a day.... Meanwhile,
U.S. consumption jumped 17.6% between 1991 and 2001, as Americans built
bigger houses, bought gasoline-hungry sport-utility vehicles and took
more plane flights. The country now uses about 20 million barrels of oil
a day and imports 60% of that amount."
Oil and Gas International:
ANWR
drilling could cut 2% of US foreign oil imports.
"The report, produced at the request of drilling proponent Senator Frank
Murkowski, says there can be no effect on foreign imports for almost 20
years, but by then, 60% of US oil requirements will be met by foreign oil
if ANWR drilling is permitted, 62% if it were not. The report also noted that
drilling in the Refuge would create relatively few jobs - just 65,000 by the
year 2020, not the 735,000 proponents have said."
Oil and Gas International:
Search
underway in unrecognized Somaliland waters.
"The Republic of Somaliland has not yet been recognized by other governments."
Oil Online:
Kerr-McGee
increases capital budget.
"Kerr-McGee Corp. has increased its capital budget for exploration and
production development projects by 15%, or $120 million, to
approximately $900 million."
> When I viewed that Oil Online article, it was displaying a banner ad from
Greenpeace, which linked to a page advertising a position for a "ship operations manager"
whose responsibilities would include ensuring "safe, effective and efficient
operation of Greenpeace ships."
> Outrageous! (As in "far out, man, really surreal.")
2002.03.13
Houston Chronicle:
Hiring
slow for most oil geologists, but rookies get big bucks.
"The young group averaged $64,000 in 2001-2002, up from $59,700 in
2000-2001, according to the surveys conducted by MLA Resources of
Tulsa, Okla. The older group averaged $99,400, down from $100,600
the previous year."
Oil & Gas Journal:
Salaries
in the UK upstream oil and gas industry continue to rise, survey says.
"The best paid positions in the UK upstream oil and gas business last
year were in business development, petroleum and reservoir engineering,
geophysics, and legal, according to the report."
2002.03.11
Oil & Gas Journal:
Oil
and gas markets are poised for 2003 rebound, say industry executives.
"[Marianne S. Kah, chief economist at Conoco Inc., Houston] sees US
demand for gas increasing by 2.5 bcfd this year over last year's
levels. But US gas supplies will decline by 1.7 bcfd, Kah said...
that will leave a shortfall of 1.2 bcfd -- enough to stimulate Henry
Hub natural gas spot prices to an average $2.70/MMbtu this year,
rising to $3.28 MMbtu in 2003."
Finally, Landmark's spectral decomposition tool is ready --
Oil and Gas International:
Landmark
releases high-res reservoir imaging & interpretation system.
"The SpecDecomp suite of imaging and interpretation tools is said to
enable SeisWorks and EarthCube users to significantly improve reservoir
understanding...."
> This is Landmark's (very late) answer to the Coherency Cube --
Oil IT (1998):
Coherency dispute --
Landmark bows to pressure from Amoco.
Oil and Gas International:
Land
acquisition technology alliance formed.
"Veritas DGC and Input/Output have established a strategic alliance to
utilize VectorSeis digital technology for the acquisition of land seismic
data in North America." ...
"Together, the companies have acquired and processed 16 VectorSeis surveys
in 2001."
Oil and Gas International:
Magic
Earth releases GeoProbe 2.6.
"The new release will be distributed in April to current Magic Earth
customers."
2002.03.06
Wall Street Journal (subscription):
Ford
Announces Plans to Sell `Hybrid'-System Escape SUV.
"As the Senate gears up to debate the fuel economy of sport-utility
vehicles and pickup trucks, a senior Ford Motor Co. executive said the
No. 2 auto maker aims to sell `tens of thousands' of a small,
superfuel-efficient Escape SUV powered by a gasoline-electric `hybrid'
propulsion system.
"Prabhakar Patil, head of Ford's program that aims to launch the Escape
hybrid by the end of 2003, said at an auto-industry conference here
Wednesday that the hybrid Escape isn't intended as a niche vehicle."
NPR is doing a week-long series on oil --
NPR:
Oil and
Dependence. Can America Break Free from Foreign Oil?
Oil and Gas International:
Directional
well planning & survey management software released.
"Paradigm Geophysical has released its new directional well planning and
survey management system, DirectorGeo. This new software package is fully
integrated with VoxelGeo, Paradigm's volume-based interpretation and
visualization system."
> I started using VoxelView in 1991 when it was a product of Vital
Images, a company from Iowa. This was several years before Cogniseis
bought it and renamed it VoxelGeo. And of course Cogniseis was bought
by Paradigm a few years later.
> We don't have VoxelGeo at Ensign. Man, I miss it.
2002.03.05
Oil and Gas International:
ChevronTexaco
planning Mississippi Canyon Block 860 probe.
"Dominion's Devils Tower Field is eight miles away in Block 773, Shell's
Mensa Field is 15 miles away in Block 731, and the largest field
discovered in the US Gulf of Mexico to date, BP's Thunder Horse, is 16
miles away spanning Mississippi Canyon Blocks 776, 777, 778, and 822."
> You might want to refer back to this map.
Remember that until last month, Thunder Horse was known as Crazy Horse.
Associated Press:
Executive
at Ford pushes diesel use.
"He said today's diesel fuel has the drawbacks of high sulfur content
and particulate emission but noted that diesel offers greater fuel
economy and faster acceleration than gasoline."
2002.03.03
Here a series of five postings on the week in the life of a drill
ship "positioning operator." I thought his journal was really interesting,
even though he thinks the palaeontologists decide where to drill
the wells --
Slate:
Diary.
"A roughneck (drillfloor worker) dropped his adjustable wrench down
through the hole in the middle of the ship and into the wellbore....
The entire drill string therefore had to be pulled out of the hole,
90-foot sections at a time. Then a special retrieving tool was
attached, and the drill string was run all the way back into the
hole.... Remember that each `trip' into and out of the hole took nearly
six hours on this well, so by the time they got the wrench back, the
drilling contractor had been on `down time' for over 24 hours. At a
couple of hundred grand per day, this makes people cranky."
> I heard this story years ago; I don't remember it involving a
drillship, however. It sounds suspiciously like a workplace myth,
but it is a good story.
2002.03.01
Oil and Gas Journal International:
Veritas
adjusting to industry shifts. (I guess that would be a "seismic shift.")
"Currently, Veritas has 11 land crews doing contract work: eight in
Canada, one in Alaska, and two in Oman, and it will be commencing a
large new project in Peru scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter. It
only has one marine contract at this time, an Asia-Pacific shoot
utilizing the Polar Search, a four-streamer vessel, which was
demobilized during this quarter and will be replaced with the Veritas
Vantage, a ten-streamer vessel scheduled to enter service in May 2002."
Oil Online:
Marathon
Oil outlines business strategy.
"This and other key elements of Marathon's strategies and business plans
were outlined today during a meeting with security analysts. In his
comments before the analysts, Marathon president and CEO Clarence P.
Cazalot, Jr., posed the question of how Marathon can compete in a
consolidating environment where the market puts a premium on size."
"`... achieve profitable growth and create value.... meet this challenge
and differentiate ... by adopting a business model ... linking our
technical strength, commercial skills and international stature with a
willingness to do things differently, and to do so with the speed and
agility of a small enterprise.'"
> Do you think that impressed the analysists?
