Just How Do We Count The Beans?

On the evening of the 28th April, Drew Leitch, Managing Director of MDT International, gave a fantastic seminar on oil and gas accounting. This event was held in London last September and due to its success Drew kindly agreed to present it again in Aberdeen. Drew really brought the subject to life showing that accounting is not all about boring spreadsheets, it was very relevant to those in the audience.

The subject matter consisted of how we account for exploration, development, and production but it seems that exploration is where all the excitement lies (even for the accountants). There is some lee-way in how you categorise the expenditure in exploration whereas we found out that accounting is relatively straight forward when it comes to development and beyond.

To get an insight into the financial side of the business is important for everybody involved, as it’s important to understand the ultimate goal of your company. The session was thoroughly enjoyed by all who came along and working through some real life examples helped to cement the ideas presented. It served as a reminder of the vast sums of money involved in our industry and how the way we account for it can have a significant impact on the bottom line. Drew was keen to emphasise the importance of G&G to the business recognising that everything starts with good technical work.

Many thanks to Drew for presenting yet another engaging talk to the young professionals and to Centrica for hosting the event!

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Pitfalls in Exploration: where does the fault lie?
Review by Conor Doherty, IHS

On an unseasonably cold April evening the YPs were treated to an informative talk on pitfalls in seismic interpretation from the highly entertaining Dr. Dave Quinn of Badleys Geoscience.

Schlumberger hosted the seminar seamlessly in their cutting edge Buckingham Gate offices; it boasts a screen that would give the IMAX a run for its money. Dave kicked-off by discussing the various projects Badleys Geoscience work on which whetted the appetite of the job hungry graduates in the audience. He then discussed the common pitfalls we fall into; ignoring the structural aspect of a stratigraphic trap, imaging & depth conversion, knowledge gaps (you don’t know what you don’t know), being drawn to the “shiny things” (amplitude “support”) and citing poor analogues.

After a short interlude we then looked at where the fault lay during the process. Dave broke this down into four parts: The seismic and how we can allow our bias to affect out workings, accuracy vs precision when carrying out Interpretation, the rush to cellularisation and the process of map creation.

Of course all of this is only a snippet of the seminar and discussions went on long into the night at The Albert pub across the road. Thanks to Dave and Schlumberger on behalf of all attendees for a very enlightening evening!

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