Distinguished Lecturer
Mateu Esteban
Summary by Conxita Taberner & Jeroen Peters
(Shell International Exploration and Production, B.V.)
“The Burial of Carbonate Reservoirs -The Rest of the Story” was given by Mateu Esteban - Repsol-YPF, Madrid - in The Netherlands on September 13th and 14th as part of his AAPG Distinguished Lecture Tour in September 2006. The visit was hosted by Shell International Exploration and Production B.V. (Rijswijk), The Petroleum Geological Society (The Hague) and the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.
The lecture, co-authored by C. Taberner, was presented at three institutions. The authors shared with the three different audiences their new findings on burial carbonate diagenesis and their vision on its impact on rock properties.
It is commonly thought that the carbonate burial environment is not very active, or that any diagenetic change in the burial environment is essentially controlled by depositional facies patterns or shallow diagenetic overprints. This is not necessarily the case, so the deep burial of carbonate reservoirs deserves more specialized attention. After all, hydrocarbon reservoirs and hydrocarbon migration occur in the deep burial environment.
This change in traditional paradigms on the main controls of rock property distribution in carbonate reservoirs during late burial diagenesis stimulated inspiring discussions on:
- fluid volumes and types
- source of fluids
- fluid flow pathways and role of H2S and organically-derived CO2
- reactions involved in the enlargement, redistribution and/or generation of porosity
- use of seismic attribute analysis and link to diagenetic patterns
- reactive transport numerical models and prediction of porosity distribution.
In any event, the burial of the reservoir is perceived as the most critical part in the understanding of the present-day reservoir.
Mateu Esteban – Biographic Note
Dr. Mateu Esteban has 35 years of worldwide experience in research and consultation on carbonate geology. Since 1994, he is the Director of Carbonates International, with office in Mallorca (Spain), currently working as external consultant for REPSOL-YPF. Previously, he was the Geological Research Director of ERICO Petroleum Information Ltd., with offices in London and Staff Research Scientist of AMOCO Production in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Mateu obtained his PhD (1973) at the University of Barcelona (Spain), where he was Assistant Professor; later he was Staff Scientist in the High Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). Mateu was an AAPG Distinguished Lecturer in 1987, 1988 and 1992, obtained the AAPG Special Commendation Award in 1993 and the Citation of Excellence in 1996. His current interests are focused on understanding and predicting carbonate porosity.