IGI User Group 2025: Advancing Geochemistry Through Collaboration and Innovation

The IGI User Group 2025 meeting, held in June at Hallsannery, was one of our best-attended events to date, welcoming 15 participants from 10 different companies. This strong turnout reflects both the growing interest in IGI’s evolving geochemical software suite and a new event programme format that introduced a geochemistry symposium and a local geological field excursion alongside highly valued targeted training workshops on our software.

The user group brought together geoscientists, software users, and industry experts for a dynamic programme of technical sessions, training, and future planning.

Highlights from the Programme

• Geochemistry Symposium: The symposium explored core topics such as learnings from a lifetime working with biomarkers (Paul Farimond, IGI), source rock facies (Catie Donohue, Murphy), molecular migration markers (Thorsten Garlichs, Geolog), and the application of machine learning in microscopy (Andre Spiglon, Petrobras) and North Sea facies identification (David Gardiner, IGI). The inclusion of a 3D virtual field trip demonstration from Petrobras using VR headset technology, added an immersive dimension to the discussions.
• Training Workshops: Four hands-on feature sessions:
  1. Sites, boreholes, and data merging
  2. Geospatial mapping, spatial interpolation and shapefile integration
  3. Collocation feature for data alignment
  4. Machine learning applications in outlier detection and oil-source correlation

These workshops provided practical insights, using realistic scenarios, into new functionalities within p:IGI+ and the ML toolkit, that have been developed for the upcoming V3.0 release.

Meeting Outcomes and Future Plans

The closing session of the user group centred on IGI’s roadmap for the short-medium term, with key developments including:

• Version 3.0 Release: a major software update is planned for the end of 2025 for both p:IGI+ and Metis. The uptake of the new releases will require a coordinated upgrade to both p:IGI+ and Metis platforms.
• Software Evolution: future development efforts will focus primarily on usability improvements and selective feature additions. One feature development area that saw discussion was depth plots and their link to electronic and mud-gas log files.
• Enhanced Data Management: an expansion into environmental monitoring (water, biodiversity & carbon capture) with an eye on storing ground truth data required for environmental credits, alongside continued support for oil & gas workflows (chromatogram storage).
• Machine Learning and Risk Analysis: continued refinement of ML tools, with an emphasis on uncertainty quantification, forensic geochemistry, and improved dimension reduction.
• Production Geochemistry: strengthening support for production allocation and reservoir modelling through enhanced ML capabilities (Bayesian unmixing) and collaborative case study work.
• Integration and Interoperability: the continued development of a Client API for Metis, making it more widely applicable in companies. Start integration plans to position IGI’s Metis tools to support the OSDU platform, for broader enterprise use.

Dates to note

·         Machine Learning Toolkit Release (works with p:IGI+ and independently):

o   now available to purchase

·         Software Version 3.0 Release:

o   December 2025

·         Online Software Version 3.0 Feature Summary Session:

o   January 2025

Future User Group Dates (alternating, online and in person)

·         2026 : Online: A series of online activities and meetings across a week

·         2027 : In person at Hallsannery, Devon

Photo: User group field trip attendees, investigating Chevron folding and turbidites at Hartland Quay, Devon