HomeScience

Science

Explorer Geophysical Corner

'The geobody tool provides a means for an interpreter to rapidly visualize the extent and orientation of anomalous geologic features of interest. However, the last decade has seen an exponential growth in both the number and size of 3-D seismic surveys. Augmented by multiple attribute volumes for each survey, these large data volumes provide both an aid and a burden on the interpreter, whose goal is to wade through all these data with the goal of extracting patterns that correlate to a geologic model, which can then be used for oil and gas exploration and development. As many of the world’s oil and gas resources lie beneath the oceans, the advances in exploration, drilling and production technologies have also focused in those areas. '

Show more
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

It started in 2001, it featured the late astronomer Carolyn Shoemaker and it offered a talk that was, no pun intended, out of this world. “It” is the AAPG Michel T. Halbouty Lecture Program, a popular and scientifically important part of the annual convention, sponsored by the AAPG Foundation. Each year at a special, non-competitive time slot, this lecture series throws a spotlight on global experts discussing wildcat exploration – especially in areas where major discoveries have been made – as well as astrogeological developments and achievements that increase our knowledge and ability to develop resources on Earth. Charles A. Sternbach, a past AAPG president who originated AAPG’s Super Basin program, will be this year’s Halbouty lecturer, presenting a talk titled “Super Basin Thinking: Methods to Explore and Revitalize the World’s Greatest Petroleum Basins.”

Show more
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Initially in charge of funding energy research and resource assessments, Houseknecht received a fateful telephone call in 1995 from former USGS Research Geologist Don Gautier, who asked him to participate in a field session in Alaska. Now, 26 years later, David Houseknecht has been awarded the Wallace E. Pratt Memorial Award for the best AAPG Bulletin article in 2019, which outlines a detailed geological framework of the North Slope to explain the geology of recent discoveries and delineate the potential for future discoveries.

Show more
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

The AAPG Discovery Thinking program will celebrate a milestone this year with its 24th and 25th forums, which will be hosted at the IMAGE 2021 conference in Denver. Since Discovery Thinking began in 2008, more than 180 speakers worldwide have been invited to share their stories of exploration that have led to large, challenging and surprising discoveries. Over the years, more than 12,000 have attended and been inspired by the forums. This year, Discovery Thinking will host two forums specifically dedicated to giants.

Show more
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

“I really do not know a lot about leadership models.” That might seem a strange sentiment coming from a Michel T. Halbouty Outstanding Leadership Award winner, but Mahmoud Abdulbaqi, this year’s honored recipient – who has spent his career in leadership positions in the oil and gas industry, its corporations and associations – is not your typical Halbouty medalist. Through his career, he found opportunities to lead, as all good leaders do, but equally important, opportunities needing leadership found him.

Show more
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

“Geologists and geophysicists work well together.” That’s Stephen A. Sonnenberg on why AAPG and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists will be coming together for the International Meeting for Applied Geoscience and Energy at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver and online, Sept. 26 through Oct. 1. This year’s inaugural hybrid event will include nearly 200 technical presentations, 14 workshops, 10 special sessions, five field trips, numerous networking opportunities and a joint exhibition showcasing the latest geoscience products and technologies will be on hand.

Show more
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

The moment Leslie B. Magoon was told he had won the 2021 Sidney Powers Memorial Award, he was speechless. Presently a senior research geologist with the United States Geological Survey, Magoon simply never considered himself in the running for such a high honor.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

For the past 20 years, the International Pavilion has been a standard fixture in AAPG’s annual convention and flagship international conferences. Visitors to the IP expect to see maps and flags and hear a variety of languages spoken in the area dedicated to connecting countries with hydrocarbon and mineral resources with companies seeking to explore and produce them. At the 2021 AAPG/Society of Exploration Geophysicists’ International Meeting for Applied Geoscience and Energy taking place in Denver this month, the traditional rows of white exhibitor stands will be replaced by a 60-square-meter IP Theatre showcasing energy opportunities around the world.

Show more
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

Can the oil and gas industry ever speak with one voice on climate action? Can majors, national oil companies, leading independents and energy trade associations ever get on the same page when it comes to climate change? And critically, is climate policy turning into a no-win exercise for the oil industry? The American Petroleum Institute and other industry associations are now adopting a revised climate policy approach, partly based on growing public pressure in support of climate action.

Show more
American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Africa Blog

Another great addition to our AAPG Africa region 2022 events calendar! The upcoming AAPG Remaining Hydrocarbon Potential in Southern African Offshore Basins GTW scheduled to take place on 7-9 February 2022 in Cape Town, South Africa will provide a broad platform for presenting and discussing the understanding of the petroleum geology of Southern African Offshore Basins

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

The Energy sector is a changing business environment. Throughout the 20th century fluctuations of oil supply and demand produced changes in the barrel price that pushed the growth or shrinkage of the industry. In this 21st century, new challenges such as diversification of the energy mix, boosting gas demand, require the exploration of critical minerals and development of new technologies as well.

Request a visit from Fernanda Raggio!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
VG Abstract

In comparison with the known boundary conditions that promote salt deformation and flow in sedimentary basins, the processes involved with the mobilization of clay-rich detrital sediments are far less well established. This talk will use seismic examples in different tectonic settings to document the variety of shale geometries that can be formed under brittle and ductile deformations.

Request a visit from Juan I. Soto!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

This presentation is a survey of subsurface machine learning concepts that have been formulated for unconventional asset development, described in the literature, and subsequently patented. Operators that utilize similar subsurface machine learning workflows and other data modelling techniques enjoy a competitive advantage at optimizing the development of unconventional plays.

Request a visit from Shane Prochnow!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

Climate change is not only happening in the atmosphere but also in the anthroposphere; in some ways the former could drive or exacerbate the latter, with extreme weather excursions and extreme excursions from societal norms occurring all over the earth. Accomplishing geoscience for a common goal – whether that is for successful business activities, resource assessment for public planning, mitigating the impacts of geological hazards, or for the sheer love of furthering knowledge and understanding – can and should be done by a workforce that is equitably developed and supported. Difficulty arises when the value of institutional programs to increase equity and diversity is not realized.

Show more

Request a visit from Sherilyn Williams-Stroud!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
VG Abstract

Production from unconventional petroleum reservoirs includes petroleum from shale, coal, tight-sand and oil-sand. These reservoirs contain enormous quantities of oil and natural gas but pose a technology challenge to both geoscientists and engineers to produce economically on a commercial scale. These reservoirs store large volumes and are widely distributed at different stratigraphic levels and basin types, offering long-term potential for energy supply. Most of these reservoirs are low permeability and porosity that need enhancement with hydraulic fracture stimulation to maximize fluid drainage. Production from these reservoirs is increasing with continued advancement in geological characterization techniques and technology for well drilling, logging, and completion with drainage enhancement. Currently, Australia, Argentina, Canada, Egypt, USA, and Venezuela are producing natural gas from low permeability reservoirs: tight-sand, shale, and coal (CBM). Canada, Russia, USA, and Venezuela are producing heavy oil from oilsand. USA is leading the development of techniques for exploring, and technology for exploiting unconventional gas resources, which can help to develop potential gas-bearing shales of Thailand. The main focus is on source-reservoir-seal shale petroleum plays. In these tight rocks petroleum resides in the micro-pores as well as adsorbed on and in the organics. Shale has very low matrix permeability (nano-darcies) and has highly layered formations with differences in vertical and horizontal properties, vertically non-homogeneous and horizontally anisotropic with complicate natural fractures. Understanding the rocks is critical in selecting fluid drainage enhancement mechanisms; rock properties such as where shale is clay or silica rich, clay types and maturation , kerogen type and maturation, permeability, porosity, and saturation. Most of these plays require horizontal development with large numbers of wells that require an understanding of formation structure, setting and reservoir character and its lateral extension. The quality of shale-gas resources depend on thickness of net pay (>100 m), adequate porosity (>2%), high reservoir pressure (ideally overpressure), high thermal maturity (>1.5% Ro), high organic richness (>2% TOC), low in clay (<50%), high in brittle minerals (quartz, carbonates, feldspars), and favourable in-situ stress. During the past decade, unconventional shale and tight-sand gas plays have become an important supply of natural gas in the US, and now in shale oil as well. As a consequence, interest to assess and explore these plays is rapidly spreading worldwide. The high production potential of shale petroleum resources has contributed to a comparably favourable outlook for increased future petroleum supplies globally. Application of 2D and 3D seismic for defining reservoirs and micro seismic for monitoring fracturing, measuring rock properties downhole (borehole imaging) and in laboratory (mineralogy, porosity, permeability), horizontal drilling (downhole GPS), and hydraulic fracture stimulation (cross-linked gel, slick-water, nitrogen or nitrogen foam) is key in improving production from these huge resources with low productivity factors.

Show more

Request a visit from Ameed Ghori!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

The Earth is not a fragile place, but our place on the Earth is very fragile. Geoscience offers a pathway to understand how the Earth has evolved and the role of biological life forms in that evolution.

Request a visit from Lesli Wood!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

Around 170 million years ago, the Gulf of Mexico basin flooded catastrophically, and the pre-existing landscape, which had been a very rugged, arid, semi-desert world, was drowned beneath an inland sea of salt water. The drowned landscape was then buried under kilometers of salt, perfectly preserving the older topography. Now, with high-quality 3D seismic data, the salt appears as a transparent layer, and the details of the drowned world can be seen in exquisite detail, providing a unique snapshot of the world on the eve of the flooding event. We can map out hills and valleys, and a system of river gullies and a large, meandering river system. These rivers in turn fed into a deep central lake, whose surface was about 750m below global sea level. This new knowledge also reveals how the Louann Salt was deposited. In contrast to published models, the salt was deposited in a deep water, hypersaline sea. We can estimate the rate of deposition, and it was very fast; we believe that the entire thickness of several kilometers of salt was laid down in a few tens of thousands of years, making it possibly the fastest sustained deposition seen so far in the geological record.

Show more

Request a visit from Frank Peel!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

Why H₂ is generated in subsurface? Which are the reactions and the promising geological setting? Example in countries where H₂ have already been found: Australia, Brazil. Kinetic reactions: i.e., Is the natural H₂ renewable? What we don't know yet about this resource and about the H₂ systems (generation/transport/accumulation). Overview of the current landscape (subsurface law, permitting, E&P activity)

Request a visit from Isabelle Moretti!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
VG Abstract

The Betic hinterland, in the westernmost Mediterranean, constitutes a unique example of a stack of metamorphic units. Using a three-dimensional model for the crustal structure of the Betics-Rif area this talk will address the role of crustal flow simultaneously to upper-crustal low-angle faulting in the origin and evolution of the topography.

Request a visit from Juan I. Soto!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

While there are many habitats that are associated with the deposition of organic-rich marine and lacustrine source rocks, one important pathway is linked to the onset of increased basin subsidence associated with major tectonic events. A key aspect is that this subsidence is spatially variable, with the uplift of basin flanks contemporaneous with the foundering of the basin center, resulting in a steeper basin profile.

Request a visit from Kurt W. Rudolph!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)

Related Interests