Six tech advancements changing the fossil fuels game

The pioneer of geological supercomputing was MIT, whose post-World War II Whirlwind system was tasked with seismic data processing. Since then, Big Oil has caught on to the potential here and there is no finish line to this race—it's constantly metamorphosing. What would have taken decades with supercomputing technology in the 1990s, now can be accomplished in a matter of weeks.

In this continual evolution, the important thing is how many calculations a computer can make per second and how much data it can store. The fastest computer will get a company to the next drilling hole before its competitors.

We are talking about MASSIVE amounts of data from constant signal loops from below the Earth's surface. For example, geologists generate sound waves using explosives or other methods that dig deep into the Earth's surface and then are sample 500 times per second. Only a supercomputer could possibly process all this complex data and make sense of it.

We've moved beyond geographical interpretations, such as pursuing exploration based on geological proximity, like Tullow's Ethiopia play is on trend with its massive Kenya finds. This is child's play. What we're talking about is using supercomputing to tell us that standing in prolific Brazil is pretty much the same as standing in Angola; or that Ghana is analog to French Guiana.

Supercomputing advances remove a great deal of the risk involved in undertaking expensive drilling when you're not sure what's there. Supercomputing essentially puts the idea of peak oil to bed for the foreseeable future.

LNG Technology: floating is not a fantasy

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) technology—from LNG seaborne tankers and LNG trains to floating LNG facilities have quickly gone from concept to commercialization, opening up new possibilities in new frontiers and rendering the remote—well, much less remote.

Liquefaction of natural gas is the process of super-cooling natural gas to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 162 degrees Celsius) at which point it becomes much safer and easier to transport. After shipped to its destination, regasification plants at importing or receiving terminals return the fuel to a gaseous state.

Floating LNG production, storage and offloading concepts are revolutionary because they have the ability to station a vessel directly over distant fields, removing the need for offshore pipelines and adding the advantage of mobility—these floating facilities can be moved to a new location once existing fields are depleted.

Floating liquefaction technology can bring additional LNG supply by accessing stranded gas reserves that were previously thought to be too remote, small or otherwise challenging for conventional land-based LNG development.

Shell's most prized LNG project is its Prelude Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) Project in Australia, which is moored some 200 kilometers out to sea and will produce gas from offshore fields and liquefy it onboard. This vessel will be six times bigger than the biggest aircraft carrier and will cost between $10.8 and $12.6 billion to build—but it also means that Shell won't have to pay rising prices in Australia's onshore LNG plants. The facility will produce about 3.6 million metric tons of LNG and 1.3 million tons of gas condensate a year.

M2M for oil and gas: getting smarter and more connected

The hottest arena in the smart grid world is machine-to-machine (M2M) technology—an industry worth $1 trillion. It's relevance to the oil and gas industry should not be underestimated. Now it's about to get even bigger because the cost of sensors used to make M2M possible has fallen so much that they are BEYOND commercially viable; and wireless networks are now cheap and everywhere. This is the next frontier in cross-sector technology.