Can predictive data analytics, a cutting-edge tool for exploration, lead to a future boom in new field discoveries and reserve additions? If it does, predictive analytics predicted it. That's the view of Andy Kemmer, a Kansas independent who has studied the history of exploration cycles and is now applying predictive analytics to midcontinent plays. Kemmer said long periods of stasis in the oil and gas industry appear to have been followed by bursts of exploration success. And, oddly, those discovery booms haven't come when the industry is booming. "I first became aware of this pattern back in the mid-1980s. Counterintuitively, there appears to be a surge in the discovery rate of large fields when oil prices are low," he said. The 1930s brought a surge in discoveries and reserve growth in the United States. Kemmer noted that the period of increased exploration success followed a period of technological advancement.
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