Tom Dunn is the leader for the Reservoir Quality Prediction Team at Chevron Energy Technology where he guides a team focused on forecasting sandstone reservoir quality ahead and away from the drill bit. Tom has a career-long fascination with sandstone petrography and diagenesis. He has studied rocks from North and South America, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Northern Europe. Much of his career has been focused on lithic sandstones. He began his career at Amoco Research Center where he worked on reservoir quality issues on sandstones from the circum-Pacific region, North Sea, Africa, and the U.S.A. After completing a Ph.D., in 1992, Tom was appointed Associate Director of the Institute for Energy Research and the Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute, University of Wyoming. He focused on petrologic issues as part of multi-disciplinary efforts on basin-centered gas as well as relative permeability anisotropy in eolian deposits. He left the Institute to consult for the research arm of PDVSA, also mentoring their young geoscientists. Before joining Chevron, he worked in the Integrated Reservoir Solutions Division of Core Laboratories focusing on offshore Brazil and the Gulf of Mexico. In this role he further developed his understanding of deep water sedimentology, core analysis, and rock typing.

Tom Dunn declared a major in Geology after attending the University of California at Santa Barbara during the summer prior to his senior year in high school. Tom has a B.A. in Geology from UC Santa Barbara and M.S. & Ph.D. from the University of Wyoming. He is a licensed professional geologist in the State of Wyoming.

Statement for DL Tour

I am grateful for the honor to be associated with the AAPG Distinguished Lecturer Series and humbled to be associated with, Ben Carsey, a great explorationist. Those of us fortunate enough to have spent a career looking at rocks owe gratitude to another great scientist from years past. Some seventy years ago, a mechanical engineer (M.E.) from Wisconsin determined that attempts at formation evaluation produced more reliable results if he could visually characterize the pore system and texture of the reservoir rock in question. That M.E. was Gus Archie, who essentially declared it was important to look at rocks — that unique answers to formation evaluation often required it. The concept of petrophysical analogs and their application stem from Archie’s work. There remains a need for rock typing and visual examination of reservoir rocks in conjunction with the wide range of analytical instrumentation now available. Petrologic examination provides a deterministic basis to calibrate our numerical simulations of rock properties. The applications of petrologic examination and rock typing span the range of one well pay determinations, completion decisions, as well as forecasting rock properties for exploration.

The proposition that the presence of hydrocarbons retards the formation of quartz cementation in sandstones and therefore preserves primary porosity is perhaps the last controversy in sandstone diagenesis. Complete with ‘schools of thought’ largely separated by the Atlantic, this concept plays out in how deep prospects are risked by many exploration companies. The controversy has strong researchers on both sides of the argument who are engaged in vibrant dialogue and active study. I wish to share examples of where we have searched for rock-based evidence for this process.