A few notes on the article.
- Seismic imaging is nothing new and has been around since the 1920s. This technology has led to most of the discoveries of oil and gas found to date.
- Advances in the almost 100 years since that time have been in the applications of this technology and refinement in it. Examples include three dimensional seismic and utilizing the power of supercomputers.
- The exploration of the fields more recently in the Gulf of Mexico do not contain salt domes but salt sheets that can be quite thick. Salt domes typically push up the formation beds to form inclined structures that oil and gas become trapped against or at times can be beneath lips of the dome. Salt sheets and can be thought of as just a layer of salt which moves to form structures that can be quite large. Discoveries like Atlantis were made exploiting the oil and gas structures around the salt sheet, but not those below it due to seismic interpretation difficulties. It is the imaging of oil and gas beneath the salt sheets which is the substance of most of the article.
- Imaging of the formations beneath salt sheets has been made for the past +25 years, and is gradually improving all the time.
- The article says that the new oil discoveries around a field like Atlantis are 'unexpected'. My experience is that one should expect more oil from larger fields. The adage is always true that one can 'find more oil where it has been found before', and large fields are almost certain to grow larger over time.
The bottom line of all this coming from an old industry hand: likely nothing new going on here, but just looking at things differently.