Consulting petroleum geologist Colin Stabler spoke to a full house at the Houston Geological Society's General Dinner on 15 September 2014, presenting "Mexico's Challenge to Explorationists."
Stabler has worked Mexican subsurface geology since 1966, first as part of a British consulting group and more recently, for Shell in Mexico City. He notes that 112 years after the first discovery, Mexico is now a mature country for conventional hydrocarbons. Increased exploration drilling has only managed to stabilize the 30-year decline in reserves. Increased investment in the fields has only managed to flatten the 10-year decline in production.
So now that Mexico is opening up to foreign oil companies, he challenged geologists and geophysicists to make a significant contribution to your companies' evaluation of the remaining conventional potential.
Stabler said you cannot expect to follow the US trends far across the Mexican border. Only the Perdido, Eagle Ford, and Rio Grande Embayment plays extend into Mexico, and then only for about a hundred kilometers south. For one thing, the Paleozoic basins are non-productive. For another, a vast area onshore and offshore into deep water is devoid of salt in Mexico, with all the ramifications that implies. Finally, he says the Tertiary clastic reservoirs are of significantly poorer quality than in the US Gulf of Mexico.
On the other hand, Stabler says Mexico has plays that do not work in the US Gulf Coast. The very prolific thrust-faulted, thick Mesozoic carbonates that have been intensely fractured have few, if any, analogs elsewhere in the world. Other plays, such as pre-salt, sub-thrust, and Lower Jurassic have been discovered but have not yet turned out to be very prolific or economic.
Why these differences and changes, he asked? As you might expect, the root cause is plate tectonics. Stabler outlined the Jurassic to Cenozoic plate tectonic history of Mexico to explain the different petroleum systems and prepare the audience for the challenge of exploring for new targets.
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