Microsoft's Bill Gates Jumps Into Oil Exploration; More Energy News

Bill Gates has read the tea leaves, and thinks that there is money in advanced oil exploration technologies.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is tossing his financial support behind a Houston company which hopes to utilize detailed analytics and measurement technologies to take some of the guesswork out of onshore oil and gas exploration. NEOS GeoSolutions -- whose investors include the legendary venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and investment bank Goldman Sachs -- today announced a $60 million investment from Gates and others.

The company touts itself as a "geosciences company where Silicon Valley meets the oil patch," and Gates' involvement certainly adds some big-name technology credentials to the mix.

According to the company's Web site, NEOS can can help oil, gas and mining companies more efficiently explore the Earth's subsurface.

We do this by integrating a broad range of geological and geophysical (G&G) data – including data available in the public domain, owned by our clients, or acquired using proprietary NEOS platforms – to produce a highly constrained 3D model of the subsurface. By applying the latest geostatistical techniques, we help our clients determine which portions of a basin might be the most prospective and, at the lease level, what areas are most likely to contain commercial quantities of hydrocarbons or minerals.

_TechFlash

Brazil's oil reserves may be set to double in extent:

Brazilian oil deposits below a layer of salt in the Atlantic Ocean hold at least 123 billion barrels of reserves, more than double government estimates, according to a university study by a former Petroleo Brasileiro SA geologist.

The research, which set out to show government figures were overly optimistic, found they underestimated the area’s potential, said Hernani Chaves, a professor at the Rio de Janeiro State University who worked at Petrobras for 35 years. The forecast, which the study puts at a 90 percent probability, compares with 50 billion barrels estimated by Brazil’s oil regulator, known as ANP.

“We started with a skeptical view and finished with bigger numbers,” _Bloomberg

Coal to rival oil in energy production by 2030

Green coal may come to India within 2 years

GE to assist Shenhua in providing clean coal technology to China

Renewables bubble bursting in Spain and France. German and Scandinavian power grid managers are not very happy about the renewables bubble either.

The world is floating in hydrocarbon energy resources. Humans in developed societies must choose between the lefty-Luddite dieoff.orgiast philosophy -- as promoted by Obama's merry band of energy starvationists -- or a cleaner and more abundant future of limitless resources released by the unbound human mind.

From an earlier article in Al Fin Energy