Tuesday, 19 August, 2025 / Edition 72

Colorado seems to be a late bloomer when it comes to back-to-school timelines in the States. Weeks after my Facebook feed was filled by my friends back home sending their kids back to school, mine go back today(!). We spent this past weekend getting last-minute school supplies, going to the local water park (Water World), and generally gearing up for a new school year.

Speaking of gearing up, oil and gas companies seem to be returning to their roots and gearing up their exploration activities. Finally! Also, much like we’d wish some of our fav uncles would do after a large meal, the Permian has found a way to reduce its methane emissions by nearly half. Let’s dig in!

Sarah Compton

Editor, Enspired

Oil Bets on Itself

360VP/Shutterstock

Fifty on green: Despite various tech giants like Apple and Google proclaiming their “zero-carbon by 2030 goals” (in some verbiage or another), oil and gas companies are betting on themselves.

The revenue streams expected from the energy transition have been trickles, at best, prompting companies like BP and Chevron to return to their roots and expertise in petroleum exploration and extraction.

Slow(er) and steady: Palzor Shenga, a senior upstream analyst at Rystad summarized it, “There’s an industry-wide sentiment now that while the energy transition is happening, it is not nearly as rapid as we thought it would be.”

Had a feeling this was coming: Some (maybe many) of us are sitting here going, “well duuuhhh,” having foreseen this because we understand physics and the fact that people really enjoy having their lights turn on when they flip the switch.

Still, there was some hope that perhaps throwing money and the best minds at our energy problems would solve them, quickly.

One step at a time: I think half of that statement is coming to fruition: after all, this newsletter highlights the steps tech and innovation are making towards diversifying our global energy solutions.

But “quickly” is unlikely to be in the cards barring some unforeseen breakthrough.

Oil still reigns supreme: In February this year, BP announced it would sharply increase investments in its petroleum wing, planning to drill more than 40 exploration wells in the next three years.

Finders’ keepers: Such a plan comes on the heels of its biggest discovery in 25 years off the coast of Brazil.

What they're saying: Chevron’s chief executive, Mike Wirth, said they’ve not been happy with the results of their exploration efforts over the last few years and have added a veritable exploration playground to the tune of 11 million total acres since 2024.

Keep on keepin’ on: Exxon is still riding the high of its Guyana discovery and shows no signs of slowing down, eyeing blocks off Libya’s coast and ramping up exploration activities in Trinidad and Tobago for the first time since the early aughts.

Tech and innovation are at the forefront of temporal and monetary efficiency gains that companies are taking advantage of.

Faster data collection: Chevron’s VP of exploration, Liz Schwarze, said seismic data processing times have come down from months to minutes thanks to new seismic and AI tech.

One of those techs the company is using to improve its subsea seismic resolution includes fit-for-purpose, suitcase-sized nodes that are nearly independent with all the clocks, batteries, and other components they could need to function.

Faster drilling: Crediting technological breakthroughs for similar reductions, BP has seen drops in their drilling timelines from months to days for their complex well in Azerbaijan.

Geoscience resurgence? Technology aside, the need for geoscientists leading the charge for exploration is still very high. Skills in this area have waned after a decade of layoffs and early retirement.

Maybe the survivors are finally in for a reprieve.

Go deeper: To read more about how the pace of the transition is being accounted for, go here. To read more about BP's return to oil and gas, go here.

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Methane in the Permian Basin

Matt Gush/Shutterstock

Although CO₂ gets more attention, another greenhouse gas (GHG) is more potent and gets the petroleum industry no small amount of bad press: methane.

By the numbers: An upstream analysis by S&P Global Commodity Insights indicates Permian Basin methane intensity from its oil and gas operations declined by more than 50 percent from 2022 to 2024.

Continued improvements: Such reductions showed no signs of slowing down, as the latest data from 2024 indicate a 29 percent reduction in the intensity of methane emissions from upstream oil and gas operations to 0.44 percent per barrel of oil equivalent.

Percentages are good for perspective, but the absolute values from 2024 are also impressive:

• A 22 percent decline from 2023 in annual methane emissions of 21.3 billion cubic feet (bcf).

• That’s the equivalent of 11.1 million tons of CO₂ avoided.

• If you zoom out and look at the period between 2022 and 2024, you have a decline of 55.2 bcf.

Eye in the sky: These values are derived from high-frequency observation data that include more than 500 high-resolution aerial surveys covering 90 percent of the basin’s productive area.

Down across the board: The overflight data showed all observable plume rates, from large (more than 1000 kilograms per hour) to small (10 kilograms per hour), declined, indicating a systemic reduction that should hopefully be sustainable.

Can’t fix what you can’t see: The quantified reduction is a great example of the way technology is having real impacts in the oil and gas industry.

Tech and AI combine forces: Improvements in materials, designs, and monitoring from all scales — both distance (e.g., on the ground up to satellites) and time (e.g., real-time vs incremental) — and AI-augmented analyses have all combined to hit this achievement.

What they're saying: Raoul LeBlanc, vice president of global upstream at S&P Global Commodity Insights, said in a statement, “Methane emissions management is being increasingly normalized as part of field operations. It’s becoming a standard and accepted part of the field staff’s responsibilities.”

He continued, “At the same time, oilfield service manufacturers are now producing equipment that includes emissions reduction as an important feature, and operators are increasingly utilizing AI and machine learning to not only ‘find and fix’ but ‘predict and prevent’ emissions.”

Go deeper: To learn more about the improvements in the Permian, go here.

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✉️ To get in touch with Sarah or suggest a topic for Enspired, send an email to editorial@aapg.org.