applied petroleum geology

Earth Processes & Properties

• Introduction to Petroleum Geoscience
  • Key elements in geoscience studies; importance of scale
  • Importance of geoscience in exploration & development
  • Exercise: Geological images at different scales Exercise: Geoscience in exploration and development
• The Earth; from the Planet to Atoms & everything in between
  • Formation of the Solar System & the Earth
  • Origin of life
  • Rock forming minerals
  • Rocks; igneous, metamorphic & sedimentary
  • Siliciclastic & carbonate sedimentary rocks
  • Exercise: Description of rock samples
• Earth Processes; Plate Tectonics & Sedimentary Basins
  • Evidence for Plate Tectonic theory
  • Types of plate margin (and associated basins)
  • Basin formation in divergent & convergent margins
  • Controls on sedimentary deposition in basins
  • Transgression, regression, onlap & offlap
  • Exercise: Why is Plate tectonics more than just a theory?
  • Exercise: Principle of Superposition (Stratigraphy)
  • Exercise: Describe some rock samples

The Petroleum Play

• Introduction to Petroleum Systems
  • Elements and processes in a Petroleum System
  • Petroleum System at the Critical Moment
  • Burial history and Petroleum Events charts
  • Exercise: Identify best drillable prospects
  • Exercise: Draw a Petroleum Events chart
• Source rocks, maturity and migration
  • Source rock quality
  • Oil or gas prone?
  • Maturity modeling
  • Expulsion & migration
  • Matching reservoir hydrocarbons with source rocks
• Structural concepts
  • Depicting subsurface structural features
  • Drawing structural maps
  • Folds; anticlines and synclines
  • Faults; normal, reverse & growth
  • Exercise: Mapping an anticlinal feature
• Traps and seals
  • Trapping mechanisms; structural & stratigraphic
  • Importance & characteristics of a good seal
  • Identifying traps on seismic data
  • Refining structural features using borehole data
  • Determine whether faults are sealing
  • Exercise: Identifying dip pattern changes
  • Exercise: Unconformity
  • Exercise: Dip patterns associated with normal & reverse faults
  • Exercise: Image across a fault zone Exercise: Dips across a fault zone

Sedimentology

• Sedimentary processes & rock facies
  • Lithology; mineralogy & grainsize variation
  • Geometry; channels and bar features
  • Sedimentary structures; bedding, slumps, bioturbation
  • Palaeocurrent direction
  • Palaeontology; biofacies (age & palaeo-environments)
  • Exercise: Importance of data integration
  • Exercise: Identifying sedimentary features
• Clastics: Eolian and fluvial sediments
  • Eolian deposition models
  • Palaeo-environment & stratigraphy
  • Controls in fluvial systems
  • Braided river systems
  • Meandering river systems
• Clastics: Deltaic, coastal & shelf siliciclastic sediments
  • Delta models & controls
  • Models for sand distribution
  • Facies associations
  • Distributary fronts vs channel sands
  • Coastal barrier bar and lagoon settings
  • Exercise: Mapping a distributary front system
  • Exercise: Mapping a channel sand
• Clastics: Deepwater sediments
  • Depositional processes
  • Sedimentary models
  • Features in distal & proximal facies
• Carbonate sediments
  • Facies associations in shoreline & shelf settings
  • Shelf facies
  • Reefal developments
  • Carbonate sequence stratigraphy & analogue modeling
  • Exercise: Orientation of reefal trend

Reservoir rocks

• Reservoir rocks - poro-perms
  • Definition & measurement of porosity
  • Diagenesis; destroying or enhancing porosity
  • Definition & measurement of permeability
  • Factors causing permeability anisotropy
  • Relation between porosity & permeability
  • Capillary pressure relationships
  • Relative permeabilty
  • Averaging & upscaling poroperm data
  • Exercise: Porosity enhancement or deterioration?
  • Exercise: Importance of understanding clay distribution
• Fracture systems
  • Fracture types; open, healed, vuggy, syneresis
  • Subsurface stress; borehole breakout & tensile fractures
  • Quantitative treatment of fractures; vugs & clay
  • Quantitative treatment; fracture width & production
  • Exercise: Fracture identification - 1
  • Exercise: Fracture identification - 2
  • Exercise: Fracture identification - 3
• Reservoir delineation by data integration
  • Case study; exploration appraisal in a delta setting
  • Case study; finding new oil in an old field
  • Exercise: Make paleogeographic map in delta setting
• Introduction to Sequence Stratigraphy
  • Deposition architecture and parasequences
  • Chronstratigraphic vs lithostratigraphic correlation
  • Integration of seismics

Reservoir Characterization & Modeling

• Quantitative tools to evaluate the reservoir
  • Applications of logs & images
  • Acquisition & LQC
  • Borehole environment & tool concepts
  • Archie's equation
  • Connate water resistivity
  • Porosity; and lithology, shale and gas affects
  • Resistivity measurements, invasion profiles
  • Solving for Sw
  • Thin beds interpretation, supported by well test data
  • Exercise: LQC, suspicious looking acquisition data
  • Exercise: Read density value off a log, & compute porosity
  • Exercise: Quick-look from resistivity logs of h/c zone
  • Exercise: Solving for Sw across water & H/C zones
  • Exercise: Quicklook for gas in thin beds
• Determining original oil in place
  • Parameters needed to calculate oil or gas in place
  • Gross rock volumes by planimetry
  • Deterministic vs Monte Carlo approach
  • Recovery factors & reserves
  • Reserves vs resources
  • Risk vs uncertainties
  • Exercise: Gross vs. net reservoir volume
• Taking integration to the field level
  • Developing facies models from image & log data
  • Seismic attribute mapping to show facies distributions
  • Assigning petrophysical parameters based on facies
  • Modelling flow using outcrop analogs
  • Reservoir simulation
• Wrap up: review & discussion