T

his article is written in response to an article that appeared in The Jakarta Post, '€œExploration for oil necessary for Indonesia'€, which was written by Adjie Harisandi of Mandiri Bank in Jakarta.

The article is not intended to give details of the technology available, neither is it intended to explain how it does what it does, the article is intended to state that there is the technology out there that could help to solve some of Indonesia'€™s energy exploration problems.

It is well-known that exploration is expensive, time consuming and a lot of the data that is collected may well be in vain.

What if I was to tell you that there is a proven technology on the market that can reduce the time taken, reduce the cost and has a higher than 60 percent probability rate of success for drill targets, compared to what is currently common in the market and has a rate of 20 percent or less?

There is technology available, technology that has been proven in many parts of the world, and by proven, I mean the exploration companies have had positive results from the recommendations and reports that have been made.

The size and scale of seismic surveys has increased alongside significant concurrent increases in computer power during the last 25 years.

This has led the seismic industry from laboriously '€” and therefore rarely '€” acquiring small 3D surveys in the 1980s to now routinely acquiring large-scale high-resolution 3D surveys.

The goals and basic principles have remained the same, although the methods have changed very little over the years.

The basic theory is still the same, make a noise and listen for the return, then interpolate what has been received by computer or by the trained eye; at best, this could give a 20 percent assurance for a company to go and drill, with a
very high probability of drilling a dry hole.

The industry drills dry holes at a higher rate than it would like to (80-90 percent worldwide).

When I first started life as a hydrographic surveyor, we still positioned the vessel by sextant, we interpolated what we had collected by hand, a survey used to take six months to complete and six months to draw by hand.

The introduction of hydrographic software for data collection and processing was a dream come true for the new surveyors, although the older surveyors found it hard to understand that a '€œFair Sheet'€ could be redrawn and edited as many times as one liked.

But once everyone saw that you could process data in real-time, you could have the ships working nine months of the year instead of six months and, most importantly, a more accurate chart was produced with more data than they knew what to do with, it became accepted.

I know this as I was at the forefront of this technology as a user who had to learn it.

The technology that is available for pre-exploration surveys of oil basins is similar to this; it is the next frontier in pre-exploration. Something clearly needs to change, but are geoscientists willing?

When a country goes to war, it normally goes to war when it knows it can defeat the enemy; why would one go to war to lose?

Therefore the question is, why go out and obtain a block for exploration when you are not aware of what it contains?

Why spend millions of dollars collecting data when we know that 80 percent of the data will be in vain? Why spend three to five years collecting and processing data when it could be done in six months? Why send drilling rigs to go and drill at great expense with a 20 percent probability rate or less?

The answer is simple; you do not need to. You do need to get the most out of your seismic dollar and the most out of your drilling dollar in pre-exploration.

A company will want to carry out seismic surveys and drilling in high probability areas and not in maybe- or low-probability areas.

The technology being used is non-invasive, i.e. it is environmentally friendly, on land you do not need to cut down swathes of trees to run your seismic surveys, you do not need to upset the local community.

It is the author'€™s opinion, that companies will spend money on exploration if they do not have to spend large amounts of money collecting data with a high risk of non-return.

Many of the items discussed in the article '€œExploration for oil necessary for Indonesia'€ can be addressed if a modern approach is taken, which can only be good for Indonesia.

Yes, there are doubters of all things new, especially if it changes the way that they are used to doing things; however change is good.

When satellites were first launched for navigation, before it became known as the Global Positioning System (GPS), when you only received two passes a day instead of the constant positioning we have today, people doubted the information given to them; they all said that paper maps were better.

Today, people trust GPS, no matter if the nice lady tells you to turn left when it is a one-way street.

Innovative explorers are applying these alternative and valuable analytics successfully, why can Indonesia not do the same?