URTeC recognizes Tecpetrol for innovative development at Vaca Muerta
A Tecpetrol geosciences team received the international Best of Paper 2025 award for developing a new methodology that provides deeper insight into unconventional reservoirs.
The Unconventional Resources Technology Conference (URTeC)—one of the oil and gas industry’s leading international events—presented its Best of Paper 2025 award to Tecpetrol geoscientists David Curia, Development Geophysicists Technical Advisor; Francisco Ghersi, Development Geophysicists Analyst; and Ezequiel Damián Valeff, Development Geophysicists Expert. The award recognizes their work on a technology that could help make hydraulic fracturing in unconventional reservoirs more efficient.
Ghersi admits the news came as a surprise. “I was thrilled when we heard we’d received the award. We put a lot of work into this, and it’s not every day you get this kind of recognition.”
URTeC’s award was for the work carried out in the “Geophysical Analysis of Reservoirs” technical category.-
Held annually, URTeC brings together oil and gas professionals from around the world to exchange technical knowledge and showcase new developments in unconventional resources. The conference is jointly organized by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG). The work presented by Curia, Ghersi and Valeff centered on a computational methodology that was successfully applied in Vaca Muerta; the first time the approach had been used in an unconventional field.
A step forward in reservoir characterization
The team's work focuses on seismic reservoir characterization. By analyzing seismic waves recorded at the surface and applying advanced computational methods, they were able to build a more detailed and reliable picture of the properties of the rocks below ground. This information can be used to create more accurate reservoir models, deepen understanding of the Vaca Muerta formation and improve development planning and design.
“The industry has long relied on well-established workflows, but for many years, limited computing power meant using different approaches that offered varying degrees of accuracy,” Ghersi explains.
“We took a technology that had never been used in an unconventional reservoir and put it to work in Vaca Muerta. The result was a model that brings us much closer to what’s actually happening below ground.” David Curia, Development Geophysicists Technical Advisor at Tecpetrol.
Interestingly, Ghersi points out, the science behind the breakthrough is not new. “The physical principles governing how waves travel through the subsurface have been understood for centuries. What has changed is the computing power we now have to solve those equations across enormous volumes of seismic data. What we’ve achieved is a first step. There are still years of development ahead and we’ll need significantly more processing power, but this approach is already improving on what we can achieve today and opening the door to tools that, until recently, were simply beyond our reach.”
Valeff adds that, “The wave equation inversion produced very high-quality results, giving us a much clearer definition of the base of Vaca Muerta and allowing us to map its different units in far greater detail.”
Presence and ongoing research
Tecpetrol returned to URTeC this year to present the paper “Building on Factory-Mode Learnings to Appraise Southern Fortín de Piedra: Integrated Geological Modeling and Pilot Results.” The paper was prepared by Alejandro Bande, Development Geologist Principal; Pedro Biscayart, Vaca Muerta Development Studies Director; Ezequiel Valeff, Development Geophysicists Expert; Lucas A. Pons, Development Engineer Expert; Alejandro Laurora, Geomechanist Expert; Pablo Junco, Completion Design Expert; Diego García Acebal, Development Geologist Principal, y Sebastián Olmos, Development Engineer Technical Senior Advisor.