Actus Veritas Professional Development Options
Actus Veritas is pleased to offer a number of differently-formatted courses covering fundamental skills in Petroleum Geoscience for petroleum professionals in the early years of their career, for geoscience professionals seeking to “retool” for the Energy Transition, and the employees in the petroleum Service Industries looking to better-understand the methodologies of their customers in order to more effectively target their services.
These offerings are based on material developed for two week-long courses delivered as “Industrial Application” modules at the conclusion of a 1-year MSc programme delivered by a UK University contracted to a major NOC. The attendees on the course were geoscience professionals with between two and ten years of experience.
The premise of the courses is that many professionals in the industry are placed in teams in either exploration or project development early in their career with little prior knowledge of the workflows used by teams, how projects are structured for success, or the depth of integration necessary to succeed. It has been our experience that companies do not provide formal training in these areas, leaving staff to “learn on their feet”.
The courses are enriched by working practical examples from the 30+ years of career experience of the lecturer(s).
What will attendees gain from the courses?
Individuals taking the in-person full syllabus courses will be introduced to all of the necessary elements that deliver successful results in exploration and/or development projects. The experience of working together in teams while being mentored by highly experienced tutors provides insight into the way that creative thinking and discussion helps to deliver success. Most importantly, they will have a good understanding of the context of the work they are asked to deliver within a multi-disciplinary team, and how they can most efficiently contribute to technical and economic success.
Students taking the courses remotely will gain much of the insight and contextual value of the courses, but will lack the element of mentored teamwork which delivers much of the “punch” to the in-person classes.
Students taking the self-guided modules individually will gain a good background understanding of the tools and techniques of exploration and development projects, but will miss much of the contextual background. It is our recommendation that these modules be used by individuals seeking some specific background knowledge to enhance their understanding of specifics, for example when starting a new project where they may be exposed for the first time to inputting information for economic evaluation, or when moving into a stage-gated project.
The content of the different formats is summarized below.
In-Person Teaching, 4 to 5-day classes
It is our belief that the most value to the client is gained from the in-person classes, which allow for high-quality interaction between the tutor and the attendees, and between attendees working in 2 to 4-person teams to complete exercises. Two modules are available:
- Exploration from regional acreage assessment to definition of a prospect using the Play Fairway-based Exploration workflow.
- Project Appraisal and Development using the Stage-gate Process for project management.
These courses are a mix of lectures and team-based exercises (teams of 2 to 4 people) that are designed to both stand alone or, if both classes are taken, to take data from an initial acreage assessment through to project sanction. The constituent lectures and exercises are summarized below.
In-person Remote Learning
The same classes can be taught remotely “in person”, but with truncated exercises which, by definition, must be followed through by attendees on their own or in small teams in-house if several people work in the same office. This approach has inherently less interaction, but the basic taught facts are the same as in the “live” class.
Autonomous Remote Learning
All the of the individual lectures and some of the exercises are available as recordings that can be utilized “at leisure”, either individually, or as a coherent set over a period of time from a day to a couple of weeks.
Individual lecture subjects across the two courses are:
- Risk and Uncertainty
- Stage-gate Processes (exploration)
- Petroleum Economics
- Regional Characterization of Petroleum Systems and Play Fairways
- An Introduction to Seismic Data Processing
- From Play to Prospect
- Volumetric Calculations (Exploration)
- Getting to the Reservoir: Exploration Process and Legacy, Risk and Uncertainty.
- Project Management: What it is, and Why it is important
- Stage-Gate Processes (Projects)
o With short sections on each of Framing; Initiate; Assess; Select, Define, Execute & Operate
- Data and Data Management
- Volumetric Calculations (Development)
- Reserves and Resources
- Petroleum Economics
- Facilities Optionality
In the Exploration concentration, there are three short exercises (Basin Characterization; Economics & Heuristics; Common Risk and Gross Depositional Environment segmentation) and one major multi-day exercise with seismic interpretation, mapping and acreage high-grading.
In the Development concentration, there are three exercises, one which runs through from Initiate, to Framing and Reserves and Resources, one for Reserves and Resources, and one for Petroleum Economics. These involve mapping, well location selection, data analysis and volumetrics
In both concentrations, the exercises are undertaken in teams of 2 to 4 people. Teams are chosen to present their results to demonstrate the broad range of potential outcomes from a single, relatively simple dataset, the aim being to expose students to the ideas of multiple working hypotheses and out-of-the-box thinking and creativity.
Options
Modules can be chosen to build 1- or 2-day courses delivered remotely or in person to cover, for example, Regional Geoscience Practices for CCUS Projects, or Major Company Workflows for Service Company Managers.
