Dr. Aristofanis Stefatos Aristofanis Stefatos (41) is the Assets & Technology Director for Atlantic Petroleum Norway. He has a PhD and an MSc in geology and geophysics (University of Patras, Greece). Aris has 18 years’ work experience in geology and geophysics (10 of which in the upstream oil & gas). In 2005 he moved to frontier basin exploration with AOA Geophysics (USA) before joining Rocksource in Norway in 2006. Since 2009, he has been a member of global exploration review committees both with Rocksource and Atlantic Petroleum, performing technical and commercial risk assessment for drilling opportunities worldwide (Norway, USA, India, West Africa, Malaysia). He has a proven record of oil and gas discoveries [Norvarg gas discovery (Barents Sea 2008), Langlitinden oil discovery, (Barents Sea 2014), Ivory gas discovery (Norwegian Sea 2014), Roald Rygg gas discovery (Norwegian Sea 2015)]. In 2011 he was among the founders of Emergy Exploration which was later acquired by Atlantic Petroleum. After the acquisition in 2012, he maintained his post as Technology Director and in 2014 he also became responsible for the company’s Norwegian portfolio management. Among his other duties for the last 10 years Aris has been working in the integration of seismic and EM as Direct Hydrocarbon Indicators (DHI’s).
Over the past 13 years, there has been an increasing focus on the use of CSEM (Controlled Source ElectroMagnetic) technology for hydrocarbon exploration in marine environments. Although the true impact of any new technology on exploration success is very difficult to assess, recent exploration results from the Norwegian Continental Shelf show what appears to be a very good correlation between resistivity anomalies in the subsurface and discoveries of hydrocarbons. The importance of accessing CSEM survey data before making a drill decision will be discussed together with the possibilities for future applications of CSEM in the oil and gas industry.