Oil and gas for the future – the role of petroleum geologists in the oil industry

Abstract

Oil and gas have been the most important energy resource of the 20th century and will continue to be so in the
21th century. Petroleum geologists play a key role in exploring for oil and gas and the development and
production of oil and gas fields.
The work of a petroleum geologist can be compared to a detective’s investigation, where the subsurface
occurrence and distribution of oil and gas have to be predicted mostly by indirect evidence. A mature source rock, a migration pathway, a trap, a reservoir and a seal need to be present for any conventional petroleum
accumulation and all these elements have to work in the right sequence.
Successfully finding oil and gas, calls for the integration of a wide set of geological and geophysical disciplines,
including organic geochemistry, basin analysis, sedimentary petrology, sedimentology, sequence stratigraphy and
structural geology to remote sensing and seismic interpretation. To achieve this, petroleum geologists utilize a
wide array of tools and cutting-edge technology, ranging all the way from satellite imagery to high resolution 3D
seismic data.
A solid and broad geological background with strong basic discipline training is a pre-requisite for a successful
petroleum geologist. Any “specialist” training will happen at the beginning and throughout the industry career.