During this course, participants will gain the foundations for understanding and predicting the geometry, connectivity, and permeability trends of fluvial reservoir systems at the scale of boreholes, fields, and basins. A full range of topics needed to identify, correlate, and interpret fluvial reservoirs and encasing non-reservoir units will be covered.
The course will cover the full range of topics needed to identify, correlate, and interpret fluvial reservoirs and encasing non-reservoir units. Participants will gain the foundations for understanding and predicting the geometry, connectivity, and permeability trends of fluvial reservoir systems at the scale of boreholes, fields, and basins. To accomplish this, the course is subdivided into six components that each convey a specific aspect of fluvial stratigraphy and each build sequentially upon knowledge gained from the preceding components.
These components are, in order, fluvial geomorphology, fluvial facies, fluvial architecture, seismic geomorphology, heterogeneity and connectivity, and correlation.
Fluvial geomorphology provides a background for understanding the flow dynamics, basin processes, and accommodation conditions that dictate formation and preservation of reservoir units.
In fluvial facies participants will learn the skills needed to recognize and distinguish the sediments unique to each of the common fluvial depositional environments.
Fluvial architecture will provide insights into the origin, geometry, and lithofacies typical for each of the common reservoir (e.g. bars, etc.) and non-reservoir (e.g. abandoned channel fill, etc.) elements within fluvial sections at all levels of the fluvial hierarchy (i.e. channel-scale, vs. belt scale, vs. valley scale). In this section we will also explore controls on spatial arrangement of these elements as well as techniques for their correlation in borehole logs.
Seismic geomorphology will address common techniques for identification and mapping of reservoir elements in 3-D seismic data.
In the heterogeneity and connectivity section, we will explore the depositional processes that generate heterogeneity within fluvial reservoirs as well as the processes that connect discrete reservoir elements to each other. We will also identify some useful techniques and statistics for predicting heterogeneity and connectivity within fluvial reservoir systems.
Lastly, we will review the various techniques that may be used to correlate fluvial strata at the basin scale.
This course is part of the AAPG GeoAnalytical Credentialing Program
The AAPG Certificate in GeoAnalytics enables a geoscientist to utilize analytics and technologies to explore for new resources, optimize existing energy resources, capture and manage resource-related data, work with teams across disciplines (engineering, geoscientists, data scientists, financial analysts).