Reservoir

The Orange Basin and Gulf of Guinea will see most of the high-impact drilling activity planned this year in Africa.

Technology and partnerships remain important, while phased approaches may supplant lengthy appraisal programs, experts said during CERAWeek.

Analysts weigh near‑term risks for Middle East oil and gas producers after a tentative 2‑week ceasefire between the US‑Israeli coalition and Iran.

Conflict‑driven price gains may be offset by higher costs, supply‑chain risks, and a limited appetite for new drilling activity.

The authors propose a deep-learning-based approach enabling near-real-time CO2-plume visualization and rapid data assimilation incorporating multiple geological realizations for predicting future CO2 plume evolution and area-of-review determination.

The three featured papers illustrate how emerging computational methods—ranging from gradient-based optimization to data-driven proxies—are reshaping reservoir characterization, uncertainty assessment, and real-time decision support across diverse subsurface applications.

In this study, forward simulation is executed by a commercial reservoir simulator while external code is developed for backward calculations.

Findings from two new SPE papers argue that the tight-rock sector needs to rethink longstanding assumptions about how hydraulic fractures form underground.

In this study, the authors propose the use of a deep-learning reduced-order surrogate model that can lower computational costs significantly while still maintaining high accuracy for data assimilation or history-matching problems.

The newest recipient of the title SPE Legend of Hydraulic Fracturing talks about his career, the evolution of fracture stimulation, the development of increasingly useful simulators, and the future of the oil and gas industry. The honor was given at the 2026 SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference and Exhibition.