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23.12.2005
Exploration: What Is Happening In Ireland?

By David Bamford
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Talk to any number of exploration managers and you will hear the same story: “We need more frontier exploration acreage in our portfolio and we’d like to take a look at Country X but I neither have the staff nor the time nor perhaps the skills to really scrub the acreage for the plays and the Yet-to-Find. And yet we can’t rely on what we see from the usual contractors - it’s not great quality and all our competitors have access to the same thing!”

Some NOCs and government ministries have heard this ‘crie de coeur’ from the oil companies and have responded with really innovative content-led approaches to marketing. Others march on towards their next licence round with the same thin pack of geological information, hoping for a feeding frenzy. They just might get that if the region is blessed with world-class source rocks, surrounded by billion-barrel discoveries and has been inaccessible for the last few decades. But how many nations fall into that category?

The Last AAPG meeting in Paris in the autumn was a good lens on the diversity of approach to acreage marketing. Kuwait was happy to show photographs of the nation’s impressive producing capability and offer coffee and a conversation with interested passers-by. Colombia presented the glitziest custom-built stand in the hall, full of national colour and Perspex, and walls covered with lots of maps, cross-sections and licence information. At the other end of the spectrum was Kenya, where an administrative hiccup left them without lighting in a small booth with not much more than a licence map to show the prospect-chasers.

There was one presenter that stood out for many people, and that was the Irish PAD. I talked to some people who were taking photographs of their booth and they were intrigued that there never seemed to be a time when the stand wasn’t buzzing with explorers. I understand that over 80 different organisations, including the super-majors, visited to learn more about their frontier licence round which closes next March. Several other national government representatives, from the Philippines to Brazil, were eager to know why there was so much interest, and took time away from their stands to visit.

It seems that the Irish have listened to the industry and executed precisely what is required to make the evaluation easy for exploration managers:

There is a coherent and revealing geological story for the licence round which enables new entrants quickly to familiarize themselves with the acreage and its potential
The main risks to successful exploration are tackled ’head-on’ and the opportunities to mitigate them through the application of technology are explained
The commercial environment is in tune with the state of exploration maturity of the area, and is described in the language of the E&P business, and
All of the above were presented with absolute clarity, with a branding which makes the information both attractive and memorable.
Some companies were also able to visit a special briefing room for a detailed run-through of the G&G analysis. Interestingly, the PAD also gave one large wall of the briefing room over to selected farm-out montages, acting as catalyst for some of the current licence-holders as well as promoters of a new and appealing story about Atlantic Ireland.

And all this was achieved in six months, with AAPG Paris as the key milestone in a carefully managed programme. The PAD have a commercial product version of their story now available for sale and, I am told, are following-up on the interest shown with vigour, and a seismic data pack, and a commercial handbook.

So perhaps ‘local’ companies such as Island Oil and Gas and Providence Resources will be joined by a coterie of bigger Independents, all of them thoroughly well-briefed and eager.

Sound too good to be true? Well, maybe you are right!

A certain Major oil company, with its HQ in the Hague, has managed to provoke such local unrest close to the land-fall of one of its mooted developments that one has to contemplate the existence of ‘political risk’ in Ireland!

The dispute has come to such a pass that the relevant Minister has just appointed a mediator, Peter Cassells, the respected former head of Irish TUC. It would be a pity if the upcoming licence round were poorly subscribed to or even delayed because of Major clumsiness.

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David Bamford is 58. With a Ph.D in Geological Sciences from the University of Birmingham, he had over 23 years exploration experience with BP where he was Chief Geophysicist from 1990 to 1995, General Manager for West Africa from 1995 to 1998, and acted as Vice President, Exploration, directing BP's global exploration programme, from 2001 to 2003. He retired from BP in 2003 and now is a non-executive Director of Tullow Oil plc, and of Paras Limited, a specialist oil and gas industry consulting firm, and Visiting Professor of Geophysics at the University of Leicester.