Industry / 02

Find the sweet spot before the horizontal goes down.

Unconventional plays live or die on well placement. We map hydrocarbon saturation, porosity, and productive zones remotely — so your landing target is picked on data, not optimism, before steel touches rock.

Request a Sweet-Spot Survey How It Works
15,000 ft
Mapping depth
4–6 wks
Typical turnaround
3×
Cheaper than seismic
0
Surface footprint
Non-conventional shale drilling rig
The problem

In shale, the rock isn't uniform.

Sweet-spot heterogeneity is the defining economic variable of unconventional development. Two wells, 1,500 feet apart, can deliver 3× different cumulative production — driven by localized variations in TOC, porosity, and saturation.

Seismic tells you about structure. What it often can't tell you is whether hydrocarbons are actually there, in what volume, and in which zones they are producible.

Inside Earth fills that gap: we map substance, not just shape. The output is a grid of hydrocarbon-confirmed zones with saturation indicators, layered directly onto your existing seismic or GIS.

What we deliver

Intel your subsurface team can drill against.

All deliverables are GIS-ready, NDA-covered, and delivered in standard formats so your geology team can plug straight into planning and reservoir models.

Sweet-spot maps

Gridded hydrocarbon-saturation and productive-zone classification across your acreage, resolved to sub-section scale.

Zone stack ranking

Where multiple benches exist, we rank them by indicated productivity so you prioritize the landing interval with the strongest signal.

Lateral trajectory inputs

Coordinates and depth guidance that your drilling & reservoir teams use to plan lateral landings and minimize non-productive footage.

Use cases

Where unconventional operators deploy us.

Pad siting & lateral landing

Pick pad locations and landing targets based on hydrocarbon-saturation maps — reduce dry footage and improve EUR per lateral foot.

Acquisition due diligence

Verify acreage quality before a bolt-on acquisition. Our survey gives you an independent, non-seller-provided subsurface view.

Infill & refrac targeting

Identify undrained rock volumes between producing wells to guide infill drilling and refrac campaigns in mature shale developments.

Gas-cap & water-leg de-risk

Detect water, CO₂, and gas caps ahead of time — prevent surprises at TD and the safety and cost consequences that follow.

By the numbers

What unconventional operators see, on average.

3×
Faster than seismic
15,000 ft
Max depth
<6 wks
Typical delivery
0
Permits required
Related industries

Also serving adjacent plays.

Conventional

Conventional oil & gas

Onshore conventional plays — de-risk exploration before any seismic program mobilizes.

Explore
Offshore

Offshore oil & gas

Remote subsurface mapping through water — 15,000 ft of combined water column and rock.

Explore
Critical minerals

Lithium & brines

Salar and hard-rock lithium prospecting — grade and concentration confirmed remotely.

Explore
FAQ

Questions engineers and exploration VPs ask us.

Short answers. If something here touches your project, ask us the specific version under NDA.

Does remote mapping work in shale and tight plays where porosity is in the micro-to-nano range?

Yes. In unconventional targets we don't measure macroscopic porosity directly — we measure hydrocarbon saturation signatures that integrate over the productive interval. Output is a saturation heatmap across the target bench, suitable for sweet-spot identification and landing-point selection.

Can you distinguish between productive zones and dry or water-wet zones?

Yes. Our NMR signatures differentiate between hydrocarbon-saturated, water-saturated, and CO₂/gas-cap zones. That is specifically why unconventional operators use us as a pre-drill screen — it removes the two most common disappointment modes (dry landings and water production).

How does your output integrate with existing seismic and subsurface models?

Deliverables ship as georeferenced grids and polygons that load directly into Petrel, Leapfrog, ArcGIS, or Kingdom. Many clients overlay our saturation maps onto their 3D seismic cube as an additional attribute layer to inform landing-point selection.

What do operators typically see in landing-footage productivity after using your maps?

Named results vary by basin and are shared under NDA. Directionally, clients report a meaningful reduction in non-productive lateral footage and improved EUR per lateral foot when pad siting and landing points are picked against our saturation grids rather than on equally-spaced patterns.

Can you support multi-bench stacked plays where we need to rank which bench to land in first?

Yes. For stacked targets we return saturation grids per interval, so you can rank benches by indicated productivity and sequence development accordingly. This is one of our most common unconventional use cases.

How is this different from magnetotellurics, CSEM, or airborne gravity gradiometry?

Those methods image structural anomalies — resistivity contrasts, density contrasts — that may or may not correlate with hydrocarbon presence. Our NMR signature library maps the substance itself. They're complementary, and we integrate with them on projects where both have been run.

Let's scope it

Pick your next pad on evidence, not outlines.

Send us an AMI boundary or target benches. We'll return a scope, timeline, and pricing — under NDA — within one business day.

Request an Assessment See the Technology