News

October 23, 2008

Geophysical Technologies: Non-Seismic Companies Are Struggling Through The Valley Of Death

By David Bamford

Many years ago, my first boss at BP said something along the lines of “If you have US$100 to spend on geophysics, spend US$99 on seismic and the US$1.00 on a good cup of coffee!” However, as we moved into the 21st century, I began to wonder if he was no longer right. There seemed to be enough fuss around non-seismic methods, namely gravity, magnetics and especially electro-magnetics, that I wondered out loud – and wrote about – whether as acquisition and processing techniques improved these neglected technologies of the geophysical world would finally take their place alongside seismic as powerful contributors, especially to exploration.

Unfortunately, I seem to have been wrong about that. I have to confess that over the last couple of years I have seen and heard no evidence that experienced explorers, as opposed to the marketing departments of the ‘niche’ service providers, are willing to stand up and be counted by pointing to transformed exploration success rates as a result of using these non-seismic techniques.

In fact, you can see that two different markets are providing their own judgement. In the oil field services...