Q: As IOCs move closer to production, how will Dynamic Group position itself to acquire future work?

RP: Dynamic Group is predominantly focused on early-stage exploration and telling the geological story of specific regions. In Mexico, the offshore industry has moved beyond that, as most of the offshore high-potential acreage is now leased to IOCs in areas outside of Round 0. At the moment, IOCs are maturing the acreage they acquired and are putting together a portfolio of best leads before drilling tranches of deepwater prospects that will take place toward the end of 2019 and into 2020. Once these first drilling results come in, there will be surprises and companies will re-evaluate their regional models. It is at this point that Dynamic Group re-enters the picture in Mexico. We will update regional models and operators will consider farmouts and farmins, while a cycle of re-evaluations and reassignments take place. With extra data acquired through drilling, Dynamic Group can further refine and update our data models.

Q: What is the purpose of Dynamic Group’s SuperCache onshore Mexico dataset?

RP: The SuperCache Mexico was driven by clients and potential clients that saw great potential in Mexico’s onshore despite most of the IOCs and international large independents having focused investment on the offshore arena. There is already a huge oil play in Tampico-Misantla, but these areas present operational, social and environmental challenges that do not exist in the same way in offshore operations. However, non-PEMEX and foreign companies have relatively little information about these areas. Our reconnaissance intended to find out how good the best of the CNH regional 2D data actually was. We were pleased with the results. Most of the data is good and we were able to draw together lines from many vintages, which also was our expertise on the US shelf, where we put together 40,000km of vintage US data from across the shelf to build a basin framework. We did enough work to be encouraged that the existing 2D data onshore is sufficient to build a model to see which areas have the greatest play potential.

Q: How does Dynamic Group leverage its international experience for improved services in Mexico?

SV: Our international expertise is in early exploration and advising governments. We have carried out work in East Africa, Trinidad & Tobago and India, among other countries. Dynamic Group is proud of its ability to integrate existing data sets and focus on new ways to get the most from existing data in terms of geology and geophysical interpretation. When a market opens up like Mexico did, there is a rush to go out and acquire new data. You then have great amounts of data, but the hard work comes with the geological and geophysical work that goes into inspecting, processing and interpreting that data. Existing government datasets tend to be rich as there is an awful lot of information to play with. This usually gives us a pathway for what future data should look like. Our team reviewed CNH’s data, looking at both onshore and offshore, and various vintages. We also looked at the well database. The CNH data is robust and is openly available but the hard work is in selecting the appropriate techniques to piece that data together and build coherent velocity models. The expertise is then in building the models themselves.

A standard model cannot be applied in Mexico because it has an extraordinarily rich and diversified geology. The standard models that were presented a few years ago in terms of the comprehension of pre-salt layer and salt formations were different from what we understand takes place in other world basins. Dynamic Group’s US Gulf of Mexico data demonstrated that, for example, the basement beneath the Perdido area is not a typical crust. We have been able to show that it is an anomalous, thicker than normal oceanic crust and probably a micro-continental slither. This has a profound effect on heat flow and offers prospectors deeper insight into geological workings. This is one way that our international experience strengthens our product offering in Mexico.

Dynamic Group delivers seismic data services and geological expertise. Dynamic Group is composed of geologists and geophysicists and provides a full range of data acquisition, acquisition, processing, interpretation and advisory services.