Nexen Inc. - Nexen Geophysicist Rachel Newrick Featured in Oilweek Magazine

Nexen Geophysicist Rachel Newrick Featured in Oilweek Magazine

The November issue of Oilweek also includes a profile on Nexen Geophysicist Rachel Newrick and her work in the Canadian Oil and Gas division. Rachel's work in finding unconventional gas resources and her passion for riding motorcycles are both included in the article.

No longer do the prolific fields hunted by Canada’s early explorers still exist, and companies must employ sharp, young minds capable of thinking outside traditional parameters to find the deeper hidden treasure. One of those is Rachel Newrick, a geophysicist recently hired by Nexen Inc. after she had demonstrated she could develop more precise methods of pinpointing the location of natural gas in complex formations.

Canadian Hunter Exploration’s legendary founder, Jim Gray, recalled exploring in the 1970s: “We did everything by hand, and we drilled very, very slowly, and we drilled all kinds of dry holes. When we found a well, they were great wells. We just turned on the valve and they started producing.”

If only it were like that today. A report released by the National Energy Board last month titled Short-term Canadian Natural Gas Deliverability 2006–2008 reaffirms conclusions that the flow of conventional gas from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin is slowing: over the next two years, it is expected to decrease to 450 million cubic metres per day from 463 million cubic metres per day.

The good news is that the decrease will be more than offset by production from unconventional gas sources such as coalbed methane (CBM) and shale gas. In the next two years, deliverability from CBM itself is expected to more than triple to 27 million cubic metres per day resulting, surprisingly, in a one per cent growth.

“All my work in the past year for Nexen has been in unconventional gas,” says Newrick, a New Zealander with an enthusiastic, outgoing personality. In their search for untapped gas, exploration and production companies are pushing relentlessly west, moving from central Alberta to the more complex geology of the Rocky Mountain foothills. Nexen’s search has also focused on under-explored areas of northeast British Columbia, particularly in the Horn River Basin.

“Rachel is able to see definitive ways to improve data quality which will give us better interpretation,” says Mike Simpson, who heads Nexen’s new growth team. “It’s particularly important in areas where you’ve got structural environments such as the Alberta foothills, which are particularly challenging because of the difficulty of surface access.”