HR: 08:30h
AN: U41A-01 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Facing Today's Exploration Challenges in the Gulf of Mexico
AU: * Detomo, R
EM: Rocco.Detomo@Shell.com
AF: Shell Internation E&P, Inc, One Shell Square P.O. Box 61933, New Orleans, LA 70161-1933 United States
AB: The Gulf of Mexico represents one of the most intensively explored basins in the world, and yet it still delivers significant new material oil and gas discoveries every year. Because of it high productivity, geologic complexity, competitive acreage access and large profitability margins, the Gulf of Mexico presents many industry-leading challenges to Exploration today. For major companies exploring for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico today, their challenge is to "safely, responsibly and profitably find and produce reduced accumulations in increasingly hostile settings." The GoM serves as the sportsman's playground for a significant population located in and around its waters, and therefore, operating safely and responsibly are unassailable moral and operational standards by which we sustain future development, and maintain our license to operate. With that as a backdrop, today's challenges are driven by the nature of where the business is looking for new reserves in this extremely mature basin. These "Opportunities" encompass the following: 1) large, under-explored, sub-salt areas, characterized by poor seismic imaging, uncertain geologic regimes and potentially dangerous overpressures, 2) deep true-vertical-depth opportunities in older rocks that challenge our understanding of reservoir quality prediction and hydrocarbon systems, and are at the edge of today's drilling technologies, 3) access to sensitive areas including the eastern GoM-Florida shelf, coastal areas and international borders, 4) challenging "small accumulation" discoveries that cannot support expensive appraisal or development options, are remote to infrastructure or inefficiently produce the reservoir, and finally 5) new play development, which is challenged by long maturation cycles, small acreage blocks, intense international competition, and rapid lease rolls. This talk will consider what Shell and the Oil & Gas Industry does today to succeed in this arena, and specifically will show examples of the role of technology in meeting these challenges. I will briefly discuss likely future challenges and emerging and upcoming technologies that might help to meet these challenges.
DE: 3000 MARINE GEOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS
SC: Union [U]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly