Remember regional geology? Seems it's almost disappeared from some oil companies' exploration strategies. But many argue it's still the starting point for finding oil.

Imagine searching for the remains of the Titanic by randomly trolling the entire North Atlantic. The folks who found that wreckage probably felt it was wise to have a fairly good idea of where the ship went down before launching their search.
But the sense in the geological community is that this is how some oil and gas companies look for hydrocarbons. "Here's how a lot of companies explore in the Gulf of Mexico," said Jeff Brame, chief geoscientist for Brame Geoscience in Houston. "An exploration manager will get 10 workstations and 10 geoscientists to work at them and buy all of the 3D spec seismic data over an area. They'll load the data on the workstations, and the geoscientists will scan through the data. They don't know the regional geology, and they're really not too sure what the producing fields look like. They just look for funny things, odd-looking anomalies on the seismic.
"They compile them, high-grade them and pick the 10 best. They drill wells on them. And then they get disappointed because more than half of the anomalies will be something other than hydrocarbon accumulations."
Bright-spot and amplitude anomaly exploration has worked so well in the Gulf, in particular, that many companies have moved away from regional study altogether. Brame and others blame the industry's love affair with technology and its "black box" mentality for much of this. "It's so easy to fall into the seduction of the workstation and forget fundamental geology," said Jeff Lund, vice president of worldwide exploration at Kerr-McGee. "They think if they have a black box they can manipulate the software. There are a lot of people sitting at workstations with non-geoscience degrees, who are sophisticated using computers and understand the technology, but they don't have much fundamental geologic background. That's a challenge to the industry."
Why would an industry turn its back on something that seems so patently obvious? After all, it seems understanding how sediments were deposited might help determine where structures, traps and seals could contain oil and gas deposits. Said Brame, the industry's reliance on technology, even if it isn't always as accurate as might be desired, has caused it to move away from the science of geology.
True geology, which uses deductive reasoning to work from a big-picture view of a basin down to likely hydrocarbon deposits, is anything but easy. "Geology is exceedingly complex," he said. "Our industry wants to ignore that because it's hard - it's hard work finding oil 3 miles below your feet."
In years past the industry was more willing to view regional geology as the natural starting point for oil and gas exploration. Brame worked for a major in the mid-1980s and at one point was in charge of a group of geoscientists assigned to appraise mature basins all over the United States and assess them for underexplored potential. The idea was to give the company exploitation opportunities for the next 20 years. But routine rounds of layoffs since the 1980s have whittled those staffs, and few companies can afford this type of luxury in today's economic climate.
Brame has turned his experience into a consulting business that helps oil and gas companies plot their exploration strategies in the Gulf of Mexico. Rather than simply outlining play concepts in areas of interest to the company, he begins by determining that company's exploration profile - needed reserve size, risk tolerance - and then offers up play concepts across the entire Gulf that fit the profile. He also plans to compile a set of CD-ROMs offering his knowledge of the region.
"The concepts have to be applied first, and then you apply the technology to explore those concepts," he said. "I provide the concepts. It used to be done this way, and now I'm surprised at the size of the niche I occupy."