News

We’ve long been advocates for the digital acquisition of field data (e.g. see here, here and many more here), so the arrival of compass/clino smartphone ‘apps’ got us quite excited – not least for our analysis of fracture networks, where we typically make thousands or tens of thousands of individual orientation measurements. Digitalisation promises massive…

We’ve just got back from a scouting mission to Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, to finalise the field itinerary and double-check logistics and HSE for our upcoming workshop in fractured basement reservoirs, scheduled for September. It rained! A lot! And it was so windy that the arrival of our trip leader Bob Holdsworth was delayed…

Our main field-based task this month has been to re-visit the autonomous GNSS units that we deployed on Mt. Etna and which had recorded the seismic swarm that caused displacement on the Pernicana fault on the eastern flank of the volcano six months ago. We had unexpectedly lost remote contact with one of the units,…

As usual for the EAGE Annual Meeting, the 2019 edition in London included technical sessions to appeal to all tastes. As previously reported, we used this opportunity to present The Influence of Regional Tectonics on Trap Integrity in Zagros Foothills and Foreland, Kurdistan and SE Turkey, in the “Basin Evolution: Structure, Sedimentation and Economic Geology”…

Satellite imagery of areas of well exposed rock pavement can give great insight into natural fracture networks, over a range of scales that are difficult to image in the sub-surface. But care is needed when interpreting these data for use as quantitative reservoir analogues… Part of our ongoing work in fractured reservoirs is to carry…

A quick note on a couple more of our presentations at EGU… Our poster with results from our recent work on “Measuring relative ground motion across the Pernicana fault during the December 2018 – January 2019 eruption and seismic crisis of Mt. Etna, Italy, at 1 Hz sampling frequency using low-cost GNSS”, was part of…

Are we already past “Peak Geoscience”? That’s the fascinating question posed by long-standing Neftex/Halliburton colleagues at EGU next week in the plenum session: “Peak Geoscience? Uncertainty, unknowns and the future of geoscience”, Monday 8th April. Perhaps geoscience will become less critical to economic growth as we progressively de-carbonise the economy over the coming years? Right…

Fracture scaling parameters – the detailed relationship between the number of ‘big’ to ‘small’ fractures – are typically one of the most critical inputs when modelling naturally fractured reservoirs, and can have a profound influence on upscaled flow predictions. Scaling varies between different litho-stratigraphic units, and because of the inherent limits in seismic resolution, and the sparseness…

We’ve been following the renewed seismicity in the northern Zagros with great interest, including the recent Mw 6.3 and Mw 5.7 earthquakes on 25th November and 16th January. These events occurred in the general area of the Khanaqin lineament that is broadly coincident with the SE margin of the Kirkuk embayment in NE Iraq and the western…

Sometimes things happen a bit sooner than expected! Barely a month after Max Wilkinson (GRL’s GNSS expert) installed our latest network of autonomous ground monitoring units on the flanks of Etna, on December 24th the mountain started to rumble. Large amounts of ash billowed from the summit craters, followed by lava emission from newly opened…