If Geologists and Geophysicists do their jobs well, Hydrocarbon exploration should progress from the easy to the more difficult resources. Clearly they haven't done too badly. Current exploration portfolios include mixtures of difficult reservoirs (low permeability sandstones carbonates shales or coals), difficult fluids (heavy oils, contaminated or sour gases, thin columns), difficult imaging (complex geology, sub salt or sub basalt) and difficult access (Arctic, continental interiors or disputed borders). However innovation continues to find means of coping with these difficulties . In this paper, after a brief overview of remaining global exploration potential we present a review of technologies which in our view fall into the categories of available, under development, or needed for the future. We suggest, based on a review of activities and trends in the underpinning earth sciences, which of these technologies will need an extra effort to develop and which the scientific institutions look set to develop for the industry anyway.
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