Neil Watson

 History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme. (attributed to) Mark Twain. The first post in this series on the New Golden Age of Carbonates discusses how exploration is a cyclical process.  Some fields, plays or even entire basins are deemed to be played out until fresh eyes, a new technical application or, more likely, a combination of the two discovers what was present in plain sight, and a new cycle of development takes place. This Petro Ninja – Enlighten Geoscience Well of [Read more]

The start of a New Year is a good time to begin a Petro Ninja – Enlighten Geoscience Well of the Week series on the resurgence of a lithologic succession that used to dominate the western Canadian oil and gas industry. There are several ongoing examples of how carbonate reservoirs are resuming their prominence in our imaginations. At this point it is important to note that, as illustrated by the AER Table of Formations, the Paleozoic of the WCSB is dominated by carbonate rocks (limestones and [Read more]

It was -30C as I clicked on the “Submit for Review” button for what I thought would be the last Petro Ninja – Enlighten Geoscience Well of the Week for 2022. I was now ready to focus on Christmas preparations. And my mind went back to the one time I had well call on a very cold Christmas Day. We were drilling a horizontal in the Glenburn Unit in North Dakota. While it seemed hard to pull myself away from family time to take the phone call, I could tell that it was even harder for the people [Read more]

Earlier in this Petro Ninja – Enlighten Geoscience Well of the Week series on the petroleum geology of Manitoba we learned that the oil industry made its initial Manitoba discovery soon after Leduc No. 1.  Exploration success continued into this millennium at a stratigraphic level just slightly older than Manitoba’s overwhelmingly Mississippian aged production.  What else can we discover about this somewhat neglected portion of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin?  There is a lot of focus on [Read more]

Please allow me a bit of a diversion before we dive into this Petro Ninja – Enlighten Geoscience Well of the Week. The Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists is holding its Annual General Meeting on Thursday December 8, 2022. This meeting is particularly important due to a request for the members to vote on a Special Resolution to change the CSPG’s name to the Canadian Energy Geoscience Association. After almost five decades of existence, the Alberta Society of Petroleum Geologists [Read more]

In addition to highlighting cool geology, the Petro Ninja – Enlighten Geoscience Well of the Week also likes to discuss important contributions of the Canadian oil and gas industry to our nation and the world. In this case, by asking the question: Can Pre-Confederation innovations be instructive in our quest for an efficient energy transition? Investigating this premise leads to the subject of this week’s WotW. The first oil well in western Canada wasn’t the first in Canada. And with all due [Read more]

It is always appreciated when readers of the  Petro Ninja – Enlighten Geoscience Well of the Week take the time to follow-up on our articles with additional insights. This week we will start recognizing some of these contributions. We kicked off our series on the throughline of resource plays in the history of the western Canadian hydrocarbon industry with a post on the first gas well in western Canada. Robert Hawkes of Pressure Diagnostics Ltd sent a scan of a pix Card for the Alderson [Read more]