Tony Bowman, 2010 SIS Global Forum London The oil and gas industry is exploring in more and more complex structures, such as the deep water sub-salt plays in Brazil Angola, Gabon and Ghana, as well as complicated overthrusted plays in Western Canada, and the Sub-Andean basins. In addition, today’s reservoirs are increasingly difficult, including deep water turbidites in Angola, fractured carbonates, deep gas reservoirs in the middle east, emerging shale gas plays in Eastern Europe, and coal-bed methane resources in Australia. To tackle the complexities associated with these reservoirs, we will need tools that facilitate the systematic assessment of the risks involved. We believe that exploration is about people and ideas. Geoscientists have the unique ability to visualize the subsurface in 3-D, and incorporate information from a number of different sources to come up with creative play concepts. As a software provider, our job is to enable the creativity of geoscientists, and liberate their ideas. Software should be an enabler, as opposed to a barrier. Exploration is inherently risky. The key challenges for operators include managing an inventory of prospects and improving the exploration success ratio, by successfully quantifying and managing risk. Key risks—trap, reservoir, charge and seal—are all connected. They affect one another and should be analyzed as a system. Until now, a great majority of the industry’s effort has been spent on defining trap geometry and reservoir quality. However, as we communicate with our clients, we have learned that a significant percentage of exploration failure is due to a lack of understanding of charge and seal. Charge analysis has been the preserve of domain specialists until now. Replacing reserves with new discoveries is critical, but it is also important to maintain the quality of the production stream. So it’s not only the presence, but also the quality of hydrocarbon that is important. Seal integrity is potentially the largest point of failure in exploration wells. Integrated technologies are required for evaluating seal integrity over geological time, and to complement charge modeling with structural restoration. To address these problems, we have recognized that a systematic approach should be taken to provide a solution that allows explorationists to evaluate all risk elements in a holistic manner. At this week’s SIS Global Forum in London, we announced the release of Petrel 2010; with new capabilities to help systematically address these key risk elements. With Petrel 2010, we can now say that the software package is exploration ready. To address evaluation of complex structures, the modeling-while-interpreting functionality has been added, which allows geoscientists to automatically create a structural framework. Faults can be created on the fly as new interpretation is added, including the rules that define the relationship between the faults. Geoscientists can add horizons that are correctly intersected with all of the faults. The resulting structural framework has the integrity to be passed directly into the modeling realm. Modelers will no longer have to recreate framework, and interpreter knowledge is preserved in modeling workflows. Petrel capabilities have been enhanced to improve evaluation of complex reservoirs. Geoscientists can interpret stratigraphic bodies, such as channels and levees. Bodies are transferred into the modeling world with one click. The modeler can distinguish channels and levees and evaluate them as such in the modeling process. The knowledge of the interpreter is preserved, further supporting a systematic approach. The Petroleum Systems Quick Look module allows geoscientists to model charge within the Petrel environment to test fill and spill scenarios and easily rank plays and prospects. The industry leading Rock Deformation Research fault sealing functionality has been incorporated within Petrel. This provides comprehensive capabilities to effectively evaluate seal continuity, supporting mapping of fault juxtaposition, fault geometry analysis, and fault property modeling. As I mentioned previously, the goal of our business to is to enable the ideas and unleash the creativity of explorationists. To do so, we are working to put more integrated tools in the hands of geoscientists and engineers, through organic development and acquisition. Taking that goal one step further, we have created the industry’s most powerful platform for innovation with the Ocean development framework. This platform allows users to extend Petrel workflows to solve unique challenges, from shale gas to sub-salt and beyond. We recognize that as operators work to replace reserves in the most complex environments, it is imperative to have integrated tools that can systematically assess the key risks associated with these complexities. As a software and services provider, our goal is to provide tools to facilitate creativity and allow geoscientists easily test all of their ideas. After all, ideas find oil.