Explorer Geophysical Corner

This month’s column deals with quantifying facies variation.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

It’s all about staying on target: Technological advances are helping to make geosteering an increasingly valuable tool for geologists involved in horizontal wells.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

A new well in Oklahoma may be the most historic and geologically interesting project in the entire country – and for a bonus, it may involve a new helium province.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

One more time: The AAPG Foundation’s “explorer-in-residence,” Susan Eaton, is returning to Antarctica again on a scientific expedition to study the geology and the climate found at the Bottom of the World.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Geophysical Corner

This month’s column deals with seismic waveforms and facies classification.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

Online registration remains open for a conference that’s been called the “best of the best” for its technical program and cutting-edge approach to 21st century exploration in the world’s most challenging but potentially rewarding environment.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Crews face a number of challenges in acquiring 3-D seismic in the Arctic. Fortunately, there are a number of solutions, too.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

The North Sea is one place where new approaches to older challenges are constantly sought. The new technique called “frequency blend” applies color to help visualize frequency bands and is working well in the Barents Sea.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

The big chill: Arctic ice used to be a huge deterrent to seismic operations – but no more.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

This geologist sings of his path from one side of rocks to the rock side. He changed the recording industry by applying his knowledge of autocorrelation, digital signal processing and seismic deconvolution to music.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Workshop
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tuesday, 18 February Wednesday, 19 February 2025, 7:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.

Join us for AAPG Orphan, Abandoned, Idle and Marginal Wells Conference 2025. This workshop will focus on orphan, abandoned, idle, and marginal wells and the business opportunities and technology associated with plugging and repurposing wells, reducing methane emissions, protecting water supplies, and extending the lives of marginal wells.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Field Seminar
Houston, Texas
Saturday, 1 February 2025, 8:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m.

Everyone in Houston lives within a few miles of a bayou. Some people think of them as permanent, but the bayous are constantly changing, especially during high water events like Hurricane Harvey. This trip is a 2.5 mile walk down a section of Buffalo Bayou where we will look at the archives of past storms and discuss what to do for future storms.

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.

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Request a visit from Frank Peel!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

Physics is an essential component of geophysics but there is much that physics cannot know or address. 

Request a visit from John Castagna!

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

Three-dimensional (3D) seismic-reflection surveys provide one of the most important data types for understanding subsurface depositional systems. Quantitative analysis is commonly restricted to geophysical interpretation of elastic properties of rocks in the subsurface. Wide availability of 3D seismic-reflection data and integration provide opportunities for quantitative analysis of subsurface stratigraphic sequences. Here, we integrate traditional seismic-stratigraphic interpretation with quantitative geomorphologic analysis and numerical modeling to explore new insights into submarine-channel evolution.

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Request a visit from Jacob Covault!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)

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