The geoscience calendar heads to Houston. We’re watching from the basin most of the talks are, quietly, about.
George R. Brown Convention Center · Houston, Texas
Brazil crossed 3.95 million barrels a day in January — a record — and pre-salt is still where the year’s capital is going. bp called Bumerangue its biggest discovery in 25 years. The equatorial margin is drilling.
IMAGE is where the geoscience-and-energy community pauses long enough to compare notes on all of that. Most of the sessions won’t say Brazil in the title. Most of them will be, in some way, about it.
Independent, English-language field notes. No agenda beyond reading the room honestly.
AI in seismic is a vendor pitch in Aberdeen. In Brazil it is a production line.
Walk the Digital Transformation Area and you will hear AI-powered seismic sold as a frontier. The national operator in Brazil already cites AI and big data as enabler of recent pre-salt discoveries. The buyer is past the demo.
OSDU is a roadmap item in most of the world. In Brazil it is a procurement gate.
Vendors arrive at EAGE positioning OSDU adherence as forward-looking. In Brazilian RFPs it is a checkbox upstream of every commercial conversation. Miss it and you do not get scored.
Brazil is still in ramp-up. The North Sea manages decline. That gap is the EAGE conversation.
Exploration replacement is the structural question hanging over the EAGE programme. Brazil is the contrast: Búzios and Tupi still ramping, production at consecutive monthly records, and capital deployed against the Equatorial Margin frontier.
The North Sea manages decline. Brazil just opened a new ocean.
The Equatorial Margin is the counter-story to the 'where do we replace reserves' conversation at EAGE 2026 — and it is a data, seismic and execution problem at least as much as a geological one.