The potential petroleum traps are deeply buried underground. Those directly visible from the surface have been drilled for ages.
To identify potential traps, explorers employ a type of echo location called seismic search, the seismic reflection. Seismology gives an image of the substratum, but this image is fuzzy and not totally reliable. Competent and experienced people are needed to interpret it: the geophysicists. And it is also necessary to rely on local regional knowledge: studies, the surface geology,
drilling operations
already completed … Finally a synthesis of the study of all this data must be established, doing one’s best to forget nothing in the reasoning which leads to the conclusion that “there, we must drill there, because the chances of finding oil or gas are very good!” Visualising the substratum is a team task.
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