MELANIE CRUTHIRDS, News Editor
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| Speakers at the 2012 EAGE Forum explored the Copenhagen theme of “Responsibly Securing Natural Resources.” |
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This year, participants at the 75th EAGE Conference and Exhibition incorporating SPE EUROPEC will have the opportunity to take a closer look at the industry’s “Changing Frontiers.” As the global population grows and energy demand increases, oil and gas players around the world are looking for new, more sophisticated ways to access and develop Earth’s natural resources. EAGE will be held June 10-13, 2013, at ExCel London.
Technological developments and advancements in engineering have enabled the industry to harness resources previously thought unreachable or unviable. Unconventional assets, like shale and pre-salt plays, are the frontiers toward which oil and gas players will be looking. Keeping in mind economic and sustainability concerns, the presentations at EAGE 2013 will examine topics including: hydraulic fracturing, new resource potential, subsurface imaging, logging capability, and more.
Throughout the conference, participants will have access to more than 150 technical presentations and special sessions, in addition to the EAGE forum and various workshops. This year’s forum will discuss “Exploration to 2050,” while the dedicated and executive sessions will cover the global gas challenge, geological model calibration, reserves estimation and reservoir quality.
EAGE FORUM
In keeping with the overall conference theme of “Changing Frontiers,” the 2013 forum will focus on “Exploration to 2050” and will again be hosted by last year’s moderator, Julian Rush, an award-winning British television correspondent and journalist.
The forum will explore the idea of using new technologies and innovative thinking to more effectively and more sustainably access well-known plays, as well as new discoveries, from the South Atlantic to East India. The chairmen of the 2013 forum are Len Srnka, EAGE president, and Howard Leach, vice-chairman of the EAGE Local Advisory Committee.
Other forum speakers include:
Ashok Belani, Executive Vice President, Technology, Schlumberger
Luca Bertelli, Executive Vice President, Exploration & Unconventional, Eni
Mario Carminatti, Executive Manager, Exploration, Petrobras
Mike Daly, Executive Vice President, Exploration, BP
Alison Goligher, Executive Vice President, Unconventionals, Shell
Brian Maxted, President and CEO, Kosmos Energy
This year’s forum will feature timely discussion of the ways in which producers are leveraging new technology and points of view to maximize large and small discoveries around the world. The forum participants will examine how the shift in exploration success from the last decade can both inform and influence future activity to 2050.
EXPERTS DIG DEEPER
In the 2013 EAGE executive session, top oil and gas experts and academics will discuss the “Global Gas Challenge” and, more specifically, the current supply and demand trends and challenges, and unconventional approaches to extraction. Session chairs Linda DuCharme, ExxonMobil, and Andy Hopwood, BP, will be joined by speakers Matthias Bichsel (Shell), Francis Egan (Cuadrilla), Ibraheem M. Assa'adan (Saudi Aramco) and Dieter Helm, CBE (University of Oxford).
Speakers will discuss today’s gas supply and demand trends, plus challenges faced by producers and consumers around the world. Extraction methods for new and old discoveries will be covered, as well as the array of changing approaches used to get gas to market. Specific areas of interest in this forum discussion include the U.S. shale gas boom, the potential impact of gas on the UK supply, and ongoing questions regarding shale gas and the environment.
The conference will also feature dedicated sessions, which include presentations from academics and professionals from University of Geneva, University of Perugia, TNO, Total, Imperial College of London, Heriot-Watt University, University of Liverpool and BP. Official presentations include: “The Geological Model Calibration–Learnings from Integration of Reservoir Geology and Field Performance,” “Reserves Estimation, Integration and Best Practices” and “Clastic Reservoir Quality–Analysis, Modeling and Prediction.”
WORKSHOPS: A FOCUS ON SEISMIC
With speakers representing academic institutions and leading oil and gas companies, the 2013 EAGE workshops will devote three days of time to discussing the most pressing issues facing today’s geoscientists and engineers. Professionals from companies, including Schlumberger, TNO, CGG, Total, Maersk Oil, Shell, Petrobras, Saudi Aramco, BG Group, BP, Halliburton and Baker Hughes, will be joined by academics from around the world.
More than half of this year’s 16 workshops will focus on improving existing seismic methods or applying new strategies, especially in unconventional offshore environments. Topics to be covered include: full-waveform inversion, gas hydrates, shale gas extraction, seismic acquisition, reservoir models, wave equation migration velocity analysis, near-surface data, frontiers in carbonate reservoirs, land broadband technology, HPHT field lifecycles, imperfect imaging, 4D seismic surveillance, sedimentation patterns, pore pressure prediction, uncertainty modeling and micro-seismicity.
Specific workshop sessions at EAGE 2013 include “Frontiers of Shale Gas Extraction and Microseismic Monitoring,” “The Near-Surface: A Source of Information for Petroleum Exploration” and “4D Seismic Surveillance for EOR and IOR: Status and Application.”
STUDENT PROGRAM
EAGE will once again present a program for geosciences and engineering students during the 2013 conference. This year’s student program theme, “Fast Forward,” fits in with the overall conference theme of “Changing Frontiers,” and challenges students to stay on the forefront of technological innovation, as they prepare to enter the industry as professionals.
Student attendees will have the opportunity to experience, as participants or as observers, the FIELD (Fully Integrated EvaLuation Development) Challenge, in which pre-selected competing teams analyze field data and present development plans to a panel of industry professionals. The data for this year’s FIELD Challenge will come from the North Sea and is supplied by BP. The competition encourages students to change frontiers and not to limit their thinking to simply the geosciences.
Other student program activities include the Geo-Quiz; a student evening with featured speaker Iain Stewart; a motivational speech by field geologist, paleontologist and stratigrapher Jan Zalasiewicz; short courses and workshops; recruitment opportunities; and a full-day field trip around the London area. The student program is sponsored by BP, Total, ExxonMobil, Shell, SPE, and the EAGE Student Fund, including Shell, CGGVeritas and WesternGeco.
EARTHDOC
Launched in 2007, EAGE’s EarthDoc database houses approximately 45,000 technical articles from related journals and conferences, dating back to 1982. Papers from EAGE conferences are available two weeks prior to the event date, which means this year’s articles will be available around the end of May. Journals featured in the database include: First Break, Petroleum Geoscience, Near Surface Geophysics and the Journal of Environmental & Engineering Geophysics. 
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