Venture companies play an important role in creating innovative technologies in the upstream of oil and natural gas development. The technical field is extensive, such as analysis of production fluid based on the genetic analysis of underground microorganisms and drilling by plasma energy. On the other hand, notable in upstream digital transformation is the rise of venture companies offering digital solutions such as equipment failure prediction using advanced analysis techniques. Looking at trends in corporate venture capital （CVC）, which is a form of venture investment by oil companies, the number of investments in oil and gas technologies that are synergistic with core business is on the increase. In the upstream ecosystem, the importance of venture companies creating innovative services/products is expected to increase further.

GIS technology such as GPS loggings has become common recently. Real time route navigation can be displayed on our smartphone with high accuracy. This technology has already been applied for the tools of exploration in the E&P industry from 2000s. The exploration can utilize the plate reconstruction model and paleoclimate model more effectively by using the GIS technology for the play base exploration.

This presentation mentions the change of the exploration style by the application of the plate reconstruction and paleoclimate model with GIS technology. And then, we will discuss an oil majorʼs example as a possible practice of the plate reconstruction and paleoclimate model for the exploration at the underexplored area of the Eastern Africa.

Scientific ocean drilling has a history of about half a century, which has so far brought remarkable discoveries in Earth Science, such as demonstration of plate tectonics and drastic environmental changes that occurred in the past on our planet. Among them, the substantial expansion of our knowledge on the discovery of “deep subseafloor biosphere” is one of the milestone scientific achievements that overturned the paradigm of the habitability in Earthʼs interior. To date, numerous multidisciplinary studies of sediment samples cored from subseafloor have demonstrated that a remarkable number of physiologically and thus functionary unknown microorganisms are predominant, which have indigenously evolved under the dark subsurface biosphere. On-going effort on scientific exploration of the deep biosphere shows that functionality of the deep microbial ecosystem lurking inside of the Earth indeed plays important ecological roles in the global carbon and other elemental cycling; e.g., degradation processes of the buried organic matter, formation processes of biogenic gas including methane hydrates in the global subseafloor sedimentary environments. In this lecture, we introduce the recent scientific knowledge on the interaction between the occurrence of biogenic gas and the deepbiosphere activity, and discuss how we could develop carbon and energy circulation systems for the sustainable human society and Earthʼs environment in the future.

Biogenic methane gas is generated by methanogen in sediments. The generated gas can be concentrated as water dissolved gas and accumulated as methane hydrate or free gas. The sea areas around Japan have optimal conditions for biogenic gas generation comparable with other biogenic gas generating basins in the world. Gas bubbles generated from oversaturated dissolved gas cause free gas accumulation effectively, and the mechanism to produce oversaturation differs by basin. The main mechanism for oversaturation is the continuation of gas generation and decompression caused by vertical crustal movement or upward migration of formation water.

Biogenic free gas accumulation often occurs at shallow depths, and direct hydrocarbon indicators（ DHIs） on the seismic section provide a strong clue of their existence. The combined implementation of marine electro-magnetic survey with seismic survey is however recommended to reduce exploration risk, as low saturation gas also causes DHIs.

In near feature, it is expected that the understanding of the underground carbon cycle and gas accumulation mechanism will advance, and biogenic gas exploration in the seas around Japan will become more common.

We are proposing a sustainable carbon cycle system which gives a solution not only to mitigate global warming but also to supply a carbon-neutral energy resource. Carbon Capture and Storage technology could become a practical countermeasure to reduce emission of the greenhouse gas. Depleted petroleum reservoirs and aquifer have been proposed as candidate sites of CCS. The long-term aim of this research is to establish a bio-technological system to convert geologically-stored CO₂ into methane, as energy resources.

To develop a means for the conversion, we focus on technological application of a bio-electrochemical system using microbial catalyzed electrode （bio-cathode）. On the surface of bio-cathode, methanogenic microorganisms utilize electrons to convert CO₂ to methane. Such system is an attractive option for energy conversion, as the bio-cathode yields methane from electrical current, which can be provided by renewable energy sources. In other words, intermittent electrical energy provided by, for instance, wind turbines and solar cells can be stored in a stable energy form, methane.

Toward technological application of the electro-methanogenic system, we examined electro-methanogenic activity of subsurface microorganisms. Indigenous microorganisms originated from a domestic oil reservoir were inoculated into bio-electrochemical reactor cells. Upon application of constant voltage of -0.70 V, the reactors produced methane at a rate of 1,100 mmol/day・m^－2（ cathode surface area）, which was the highest electro-methanogenic production rate. Moreover, current-to-methane conversion ef?ciency was almost 98%.

Thus, we concluded microorganisms indigenous to the subsurface reservoir are highly capable of electromethanogenic conversion of CO₂. Electrochemical and microbial analyses suggested a reaction mechanism, in which electron-releasing bacteria mediated electron transfer from the electrode to methanogenic archaea. These outcomes imply the possibility of electro-methanogenesis in subsurface CO₂ storage reservoirs. For further enhancement of the electromethanogenic activity, we are currently biotechnologically improving the biocatalysts as well as optimizing con?guration of the reactor system for subsurface reservoirs.

Underground survey has long been dominated by classical mechanics, largely disregarding the potential of particle physics to augment existing techniques. The purpose of this article is to describe a potential of a new imaging technique called muography to apply to surveying underground structures. High-energy muons that are produced via the reaction between primary cosmic rays and the Earthʼs atmosphere can be used as a probe to explore the density distribution in gigantic objects including shallow parts of the Earthʼs crust. Muography has the potential to serve as a useful paradigm to transform our understanding of underground structures as the X-ray transformed our understanding of medicine and the body. Existing results for various underground targets are discussed here, and an outlook regarding anticipated future observations is briefly discussed.

We applied a supervised machine learning method for the purpose of auto detecting cavities under paved roadway from GPR （Ground Penetrating Radar） images. In cavity detection surveys under paved road way, we typically use vehicle-born GPR systems for the necessity to cover wide survey area without any traffic controls. To detect cavity from massive data acquired by vehicle-borne GPR swiftly, skilled-engineers carefully interpret GPR data considering features based on physics of GPR response. Automatic process based on knowledges of skilled-engineers is required, although automatic anomaly detection has not practically realized cause of un-uniform or complex responses from cavities. We applied machine learning methods to detect cavity anomalies using actual GPR data which were acquired on natural occurred cavities as training data. At the veri?cation with actual survey data, our method was able to detect cavitycaused GPR patterns. This will be helpful for analyzer to narrow down cavity responses, meanwhile there were still too many over detections. We think accumulation of labeled GPR data of cavity will also contribute to improvement of our method.

In the fields of oil refining, chemicals, natural resource development, power generation, gas and LNG, etc., “System Invariant Analysis Technology” detects signs of anomalies through the real-time analysis of plant operation data. SIAT is an AI technology designed by NEC to identify the cause-and-effect relationship of large amounts of sensor data. This supports plant owners in preventing occurrences of operation trouble.

JGC and NEC jointly analyzed operation data of a number of plants and found anomalous signs at locations separate from the functional failure of each equipment. These examples show that process engineering knowledge combined with advanced AI such as SIAT works quite effective for reduction of plant downtime.

The factor analysis of biomarker composition on the marine oils from the Akita and Yamagata Basins, Japan, was conducted to clarify their source rock characteristics. Three major factors controlling source rock facies are interpreted to be lithologies （Factor 1: clastic vs. siliceous/calcareous）, organic origins （Factor 2: variable contributions of land plants） and oxic/anoxic depositional conditions （Factor 3）. The Akita and Yamagata oils are differentiated into six types by the score plot of the Factor 1 and 2. The areal distribution of the oil types revealed regional variation of source rock facies, such as the higher clastic input in the Yamagata basin than in the Akita basin, higher marine organic input in the west anticline series than the east series in the Yabase oil field area. The Factor 1 and 2 are mainly represented by oleanane/norhopane ratio and the relative abundance of C₂₉ sterane among C_27-29 steranes, respectively. Based on these two biomarker parameters, the source rock lithologies in the Sea of Japan side of the Tohoku District are interpreted to change from siliceous/calcareous in the Akita area to clastic in the southwest Niigata area. The source rocks of the oils from the Sagara area in the Pacific side of the main island are evaluated to have higher land plant contributions than those from the Sea of Japan side. The oils distributed in the coal-bearing basins extending from the central Hokkaido to the offshore Pacific side of the Tohoku District contain much higher amount of C₂₉ sterane, suggesting their source rocks are coals or coaly shales.