Demystifying exploration for the City
Peter Dolan and Colin Summerhayes of the Development and Fundraising Committee have begun building contacts with city firms
Geoscientist 22.06 July 2012
The Society’s newly formed City of London Geoscience Forum (CLGF) held its third meeting at the Society’s apartments on 20 April 2012. With the title ‘Demystifying Emerging Exploration Techniques’, the meeting was kindly sponsored by one of our Corporate Affiliates, Ophir Energy plc. The event was designed for an invited audience of oil & gas analysts and investment fund managers, who are respectively concerned with evaluating and valuing oil and gas exploration and production companies, and making investments in such companies. To carry out their tasks most effectively they need to understand both the inherent prospectivity of companies’ portfolios of acreage and the technical and operational risks associated with ‘monetising’ the assets.
To assist in this understanding, the CLGF brought together a slate of 8 independent service company presenters to speak on leading edge developments in seismic acquisition and processing, non-seismic geophysical techniques, pressure prediction, drilling innovations and the rigour required to produce a trustworthy Competent Person’s Report (CPR). For those not familiar with these documents, a CPR report is compiled by qualified consultants who are accepted by all parties with a vested interest as being those most qualified to opine independently on the merits and valuation of a company’s assets. The speakers all spoke to the same format: what is new, what is promised, what are the pitfalls and how can the new methods help to inform an investment decision.
In discussions during lunch, the value of chartering geoscientists came to the fore, with some interest being displayed in the guarantee of standards provided to companies by CPR authors having chartered status. Future meetings will extend the Society’s outreach to this sector, which ultimately funds the development of natural resources and provides some, if not most, of the raison d’être for our profession and Society.