Oil in Alaska [image credit: businessinsider.com]
The oil industry is not about to go away and die quietly, contrary to the wishes of climate alarmists – far from it.
A new exploration technique has uncovered a deposit containing more than 1.5 billion barrels of crude oil in Alaska's North Slope, reports OilPrice.com.
Digital technology adoption in all stages of upstream operations in the oil and gas industry has seen a steep rise recently.
While a lot has been written about the benefits of digitizing various aspects of the well-drilling, extraction, and field maintenance processes, there is also another major field where digital tech is changing the game: before the well-drilling even begins.
In Alaska, for instance, new technology in oil and gas exploration has led to the discovery of more than 1.5 billion barrels of crude oil in the North Slope in just two years, S&P Global Platts recently reported.
These are deposits that were known to be there but the resources they held could not be mapped or measured, so the deposits were considered unproductive before digital tech, in the form of advanced 3D seismic surveys and new data processing techniques, came along.
So, established exploration methods are one area where there is a surge of improvements but there are also alternative exploration techniques emerging, such as soil analysis.
A Dutch company, Biodentify, collects thousands of soil samples to analyze the DNA of thousands of microorganisms for traces of hydrocarbons in their environment. The company utilizes machine learning for the task and to calculate the potential reserves of a deposit with, according to the company, more than 70 percent accuracy.
What's more, the whole procedure takes between 6 and 10 weeks, which is a relatively short time, especially in light of the fact that it reduces the risk of drilling unproductive wells.
Full report here.
from Climate Change Skeptic Blogs via hj on Inoreader http://bit.ly/2RtpAfA
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