Saturday, October 15, 2016

What To Know About Oil And Gas Exploration

By Kevin Jackson


Oil and gas are the main components used in gearing the economy of a country. This is because it is highly used in almost all aspects of the economy. Almost 80% of the industries use these products making them heavily used. Nevertheless, these resources can be exhausted and therefore, mining companies have to keep up with the demand and continue looking for more of these resources. Discussed below are some of the ways of oil and gas exploration.

This process allows the mining firms to search and harvest these natural resources from various parts of the earth. The process of drilling for these hydrocarbons is very expensive and therefore, the exploration is done to identify various areas which contain these resources and can allow for easy mining while putting the cost to a minimum as well as minimizing the environmental impacts.

To know about the source rock, cap rock, and trap that are on the reservoir, the explorers must use the right technology. Knowing about the place is important because the company will be able to drill the right rocks that have the resources. The technology that they can use is called seismic survey. It allows explorers to measure the various aspects of a reservoir which include electrical currents, density variation, heat flow and much more.

The seismic survey serves as one of the common methods used by the mining experts in assessing if the hydrocarbons exist more so in the deep water surveillance. The method uses sound to find out the level of the rock formation especially in deep waters. Established firms use the vibrator trucks and at times the small explosives to record the sound. They record that using a geophone. That helps them easily know the level of the deposits to know how far or near it is from the surface of the earth.

The offshore survey can be used in place of the seismic survey. It uses sound too, but the source of sound is from bubbles that are created by the explorers. When the bubbles burst on the surface of the rock, the sound that they produce will move through the rock. This process makes it possible for explorers to get the information and record it through the hydrophones. Rocks with the products usually produce a different sound so they can single out the source of the resource that they need.

Measuring the gravity of the place can be done by the use of two tools known as Magnetometers and Gravimeters. They are used to measure the level by which the gravity of the earth is pulling the rocks that the resources are located in. Gas explorers use geochemical prospecting to measure the availability gases in the earth. It uses very complicated machines that the explorers know how to use.

For the mining to be effective, the geologists have to assess the structure of the exploration site. They do this through a method called the remote sensing. To start with, an aerial photograph is taken to map the proposed area. This helps to reveal some important details like the vegetation type, soil, minerals and other features.

There comes a time where data gets limited, and the mining companies opt to perform the wildcat well. This is done in areas that have not been explored before. These wells offer the mining firms with the information concerning the site and whether there is the presence of oil and the natural gases on the ground.




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