From the outside, it may seem unusual that PetroStrat, the leading geoscience consultancy in the UK, is based in North Wales, but North Wales has been the home of industrial Geology and Earth Science for decades.

Towards the last quarter of the 20th century, many geologists worked for Robertsons, a multidisciplinary company that employed specialists in biostratigraphy, geology, and geochemistry. The Welsh landscape suits a geologist. PetroStrat HQ is built on top of the Conwy Rhyolite Formation, where our office windows look out to Conwy Mountain (Mynydd y Dref), and the fossil crab and shrimp burrows of Llandudno’s Great Orme are just around the corner.

Many of these geoscience experts, who had settled down in North Wales or nearby, then decided to pursue their business interests by setting up their own companies, sprinkling North Wales and Cheshire with internationally renowned geoscience consultancies. Each company, including PetroStrat (from 2004), provided a different service: a specialisation or experience that reflected the technical expertise of each company owner. In the case of PetroStrat, this began with biostratigraphy.

Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, PetroStrat weathered the financial pressures of a recession and an oil crash, and in 2021 a coronavirus pandemic.

The Focus Has Shifted

The world changed in the early 2020s, and with it so did the working methods of our geoscience consultancy business. While PetroStrat HQ remains in Conwy, North Wales, the introduction of hybrid and homeworking allowed PetroStrat employees to work practically anywhere on Earth – and they do! By using microscope cameras and live feeds, colleagues who work in separate counties or on separate land masses discuss the same field of view. From the UK to UAE, from Canada to Italy, the USA and beyond, our workforce is international and growing.

PetroStrat continues to evolve as our clients move beyond oil and gas, or revisit mature fields. We integrate new technologies and new applications with a traditional emphasis on geoscience skillsets. By using high-resolution scanned images of thin sections securely connected via the cloud, we can study carbonate thin sections in new ways. In many ways, light microscopes are undervalued as a necessary tool, but the zoomable and well-focused images of each thin section is now available on our laptop screens as well, which offers a new perspective on ancient and well-studied rocks.

PetroStrat is well known for biostratigraphic services, but our Reservoir Geology department and our New Ventures (R&D) teams have decades of experience in Reservoir Geology. With every new project, our skilled Reservoir Geologists contribute to the knowledge economy as our clients learn more from us about their target rocks; if requested, we use our experience and expertise to refine a client’s project aims for maximal efficiency and understanding.

An understanding of Earth Science and sedimentology extends beyond industrial applications such as reservoir geology, and our consultants are experienced in all things sedimentology, whatever the application: carbon capture and storage, chemostratigraphy, caprocks, fluid connectivity, mineralogy, unconventionals and soil science.

With PetroStrat’s recent acquisition of RPS geologists (previously Ichron) and the more recent acquisition of Viridian geoscientists (previously CGG), our once-two-person company continues to evolve, adapt and aspire towards new industrial horizons.

KeyFacts Energy Industry Directory: PetroStrat