New Technology
Controlled-source electromagnetics — the resistivity tool that de-risked the world’s giant deepwater discoveries — applied to the Comoros.
State-of-the-art tools for the hunt for Comoros oil.
Colossal Energy’s management has studied the deepwater geology of the Mozambique Channel and the Comoros for years — going back to drilling in deep water off Somalia in the early 1980s, with the Meregh-1 well by Esso Exploration (ExxonMobil). The challenges of cost and time inherent to deepwater settings are real and familiar to us. Colossal intends to raise its chance of success in the hunt for commercial oil in the Comoros by bringing new tools and state-of-the-art technology to bear.
EM can distinguish between low and high (commercial) hydrocarbon saturations. After Hesthammer et al.
Resistivity sees what seismic can’t.
In the early 1980s ExxonMobil — and later Statoil (now Equinor) in Norway — developed a new technology in Oslo to map rock resistivity in deep water in the Barents Sea, the same area where R/V Vema and Conrad first surveyed for Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory. Oil and gas in the pore spaces of reservoir rocks carry high resistivity; Statoil needed a new tool to measure it in deep, icy Arctic waters. Submarine electromagnetic source improvements, together with marine sensor-node sensitivity, let them map zones of higher resistivity and progressively open a new Arctic frontier.
While seismic images stratigraphic and structural features below the seabed, it often does not constrain the commerciality of targets before drilling. This is where CSEM adds support — well-constrained geological models that complement seismic as to where oil and gas columns are likely present in commercial volumes.
EMGS: an industry pioneer with 20+ years of experience and the largest CSEM database in the world. EMGS was founded in 2002 as a spin-off from Statoil / Equinor.
Three decades of CSEM, worldwide.
After nearly three decades of innovation, Statoil improved the Controlled Source Electromagnetic Method (CSEM) to include 2D and 3D methods, coupled with stronger electromagnetic sources and larger, wider sea-bottom arrays. Two decades later, in 2002, they spun the company off as EMGS (OSLO: EMGS).
EMGS has applied CSEM in virtually every deepwater hydrocarbon basin in the world, with clients drawn from all the major IOCs. Colossal is collaborating with EMGS for new 3D resistivity surveying over select prospects in the Comoros — raising the chance of success for commercial liquid hydrocarbons.
CSEM surveys acquired
Kilometres of sensor cable towed
Receivers deployed
Chance of success with a CSEM anomaly
Normalized anomalous response (NAR) versus drilling outcomes. Courtesy J. Hesthammer, M Vest Exploration (2017).
From 25% to 75% chance of success.
This is the same method Statoil (now Equinor) used in the Barents Sea and elsewhere, where the chance of finding commercial oil rose from 25% to more than 75% when a CSEM anomaly was present — compared with mostly dry outcomes in two-thirds of cases where no such anomaly existed.
Colossal believes applying CSEM to the deepwater setting of its Comoros blocks will focus attention on the highest-ranking prospects in the portfolio — allowing a risk-weighting of prospective oil volumes in each play, in each prospect, in each block.
The giants were found with CSEM.
Leading IOCs have applied CSEM in deepwater settings worldwide to de-risk the drilling of large, costly wells.
The top deepwater fields — in water depths greater than 2,000 m — discovered to date by the biggest IOC operators were discovered or developed with the aid of CSEM resistivity surveys.