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PETROMINER No. 08/September 1, 2015 PETROMINER No. 08/September 1, 2015 TECHNOLOGY 24 25 of the sub-soils. Two projects have been completed inIndonesia, one for oil and gas in Sumatra (Lampung area) and one for gold in Papua. Both projects showed positive resources. What is the reason we should con- sider using new technology? The modern day explorer needs to elevate the early exploration result; they need to drill valid targets as apposed to low value targets. If the modern day explorer continues to utilise traditional methods and does not incorporate tech- nology that has been developed for the specific purpose of enhancing the mod- ern day explorers capabilities, the devel- opment of new resources will not prog- ress at the rate it should or is required to, and, the resources that are discov- ered will cost far more money than they should. To arrive at the results as indi- cated, the wheel has not been reinvent- ed; some of the ideas have been on the table for a very long time. The Minister of Energy and Miner- als stated, that Indonesia needs to car- ryout exploration and it needs to attract investment, the way to do this, is to do something different and be in the driv- ing seat by knowing what and where your resources are. Indonesia needs to spend money on exploration in order to attract investment for production. So we must use new methods for exploration? Yes. New methods need to be used, and if we are realistic and truthful with ourselves, exploration has not really advanced in the past 20 years and pos- sibly more. It should be noted, that new technology does NOT replace what the explorer does today, it ENHANCES, and it increases the knowledge of a given area prior to mobilizing expensive seis- mic equipment, personnel and drilling rigs, it allows the explorer to confirm the resource instead of looking for the resource. It should be noted, that satellite in- formation that is mostly public informa- tion is only 10% of what we do, 90% is how the information is processed. We “I ask one very simple question: In- donesia states that it is very rich in minerals, oil & gas, geother- mal, etc., but where are they exactly? The answer is that we do not know, if we did know, costly exploration, that gives a return of a dry hole would not happen so often. Major oil companies would not return their blocks having lost a consid- erable amount of money. Therefore al- ternative methods of exploration has to be considered in order to increase Indo- nesia’s knowledge of the resources that they believe they have in order to attract investment. In exploration, there’s always risk as- sociated, along with high costs, we need to be able to decrease the time, the cost and the risk for exploration in order to bring production to fruition ina shorter amount of time, and of course we must always be optimistic,” said George Bar- ber, Marketing Partner Terra Energy & Resource Technologies Plc to Petromin- er in an exclusive interview. What is the background of this technology? The first 50 years of Earth observa- tions from space imparted the funda- mental lessons that everything connect- ed with the land, ocean, and atmosphere is intricately intertwined and that the Earth is a complex and dynamic system, not only on the surface, but also be- neath the sub-surface. In addition, “each (satellite) mission taught scientists, geologists and others something new aboutthe Earth’s system, it also allowed the development of new technology, both in instrumentation and software that allows exploration for the future to be viable and cost effective. In the 1970s, laser technology was first employed in combination with satellites (Laser Geo- dynamics Satellites [LAGEOS] 1 and 2) that were designed for maximum reflec- tivity to allow for the study of the Earth’s geoid and the movements of tectonic plates. Interestingly, this type of satellite does not contain any instrumentation, and for that reason the first such satel- lite launched in 1976 is still operational today. The Earth is organized; it is not chaotic. Is this new technology? This is not new; it has been in devel- opment for over 35 years and continues to be developed. The technology took a major step in 2002, when a scientific discovery of “Small circular structures Exploration for the Future use 8 independent methods of processing the data, if we see agreement between 2 or 3 or more methods, something has to be there! How about seismic data? Is that not good enough? Seismic has its limitations, it is not able to see through certain materials such as ba- salt, seismic data is also sub- ject to interpretation, and no two experts will interpret data identically, even the computers will not do this. Geology is still a subjective science. Although dry holes have been greatly reduced by 3D seismic technology, they have not been eliminated. Is satellite derived explora- tion technics full proof? Of course not, nothing is full proof or guaranteed in life, but if something can give you a 60/70% or even better probability of drilling a successful hole, it has to be bet- ter than a 10 or 20% success rate, which is normal today. The reason this happens, is that tra- ditional methods of exploration has not advanced sufficiently, we cannot detect the hard to find, smaller and deeper re- sources, if we could, dry holes, lengthy and expensive seismic surveys would not be required. The general feeling is that drilling dry holes is part of the risk for exploration, this should not be the case, drilling a dry hole that can cost $100 million or more should not be tak- en as a risk, you need to have more than a 20% change of success. Can you compare Traditional methods to Terra methods of explora- tion? The table below gives a very good comparison between traditional meth- ods and Terra’s methods. What about the accuracy of the technology? The accuracy from the information given is extremely high. We can offer something like a 60-80% probability of success, but again, a basic understand- ing of how this is achieved is required. Terra does NOT replace what the explor- er does; it simply enhances what they do. Provinces, regions, whole country’s, unexplored oil basins such as the 22 unexplored basins in East Indonesia, geothermal potential areas, areas unex- (SCS) of unconsolidated sediments of the Earth’s crust was made. By captur- ing the Earths natural acoustic emis- sions and processing the information, different resources can be recognised and processed with a result that can give the position and depth. How many projects has Terra car- ried out? Over 120 projects have been carried worldwide out with very good results, some of the results have saved the ex- ploration company’s large of amounts of money by simply being able to advice them of the difficulties that will be en- counted when drilling due to the nature plored for minerals, covered by jungle, volcanic areas, greenfield, brownfield areas, oil blocks that have produced can also be explored for po- tential oil that remains (be- cause it does), but again, an understanding of what we can do is required and why we say that Indonesia does need to do exploration with new technology in order to be able to substantiate that they are resource rich. How much for the cost? The cost really depends on the size and the scope of work, but it is fair to state that the cost could be and is very often 80-90% lower than tra- ditional methods of explora- tion, but again, a very basic understanding of what can be done is required. If the risk of drilling a dry hole that costs $50 million or more can be reduced, the cost of early exploration is small. The cost of carrying out a seismic survey in Papua for example is huge, therefore anyone asking what the cost is, should know what the cost of traditional meth- ods are and what cost is incurred when dry holes are drilled or nothing is found. It is not only financial cost that should be considered, it is also the time factor. What is the correlation between Plate tectonics, topography, seismol- ogy, and volcanology? The theory of plate tectonics was driven largely by observations in the 1950s from ocean vessels mapping the magnetic field and the seafloor shape, some of which can now be obtained more easily from satellite observations. Several decades later, satellite observa- tions enabled a scientific revolution in advancing the theory of plate tectonics by providing highly detailed, quantifi- able measurements of the Earth’s sur- face. GPS has enabled measurement of plate positioning and velocities, thus re- solving the geologic. (W18) George Barber. eye catcher
