Showcasing Contemporary Understanding and Frontier Applications
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This Symposium marks a collaborative event that brings together AAPG Europe and AAPG Middle East, with a central focus on carbonates and mixed carbonate systems worldwide, while highlighting their significance within these two regions. The primary objectives are an overview of controls that govern the evolution of these systems in time and space and the characterization and prediction of their properties across scales. Through overview presentations and case studies, the symposium will address these systems with emphasis on new scientific developments equally as on exploration and characterization of the subsurface in the era of sustainability.
The Symposium invites a review of the state of past and present knowledge on controls on how these systems develop and the introduction of new frontiers in such understanding. It will explore a spectrum of scales, from basin-wide sedimentology and sequence stratigraphy to diagenesis, pore network, and petrophysics, as well as the application of surface and subsurface mapping and characterization methods.
The event will have oral presentations, poster sessions, and field trips and aims to engage high-caliber participation from experts within the energy sector and academic institutions alike. The Symposium benefits from its location, set against the picturesque backdrop of Sicily, with diverse outcrops including the renowned giant Messinian Salt. The Sicilian experience offers a view into how European and Middle Eastern cultures have melded in the past, an ideal backdrop to merging the communities of two AAPG regions today.
This one-day field trip will focus on Mesozoic (Jurassic to Cretaceous) carbonates outcropping in the fold and thrust belt of western Sicily and equivalent to the aquifer complex of the Sciacca Geothermal Field located in the southwestern part of the island.
Participants will have the opportunity to visit in the first stop a spectacular “drowned” carbonate-platform succession at Mt. Maranfusa located in an inactive quarry about 50 km SW of Palermo. The succession consists of Lower Jurassic peritidal cycles overlain by Middle Jurassic to Cretaceous pelagic limestone (e.g. ammonitic limestone, “chalk”) and marked by an unconformity with locally hardground. Syn-depositional Mesozoic tectonic is characterized by neptunian dykes and normal faults, whereas reverse faults, strike-slip faults, and joints are related to subsequent Cenozoic deformation.
In the second stop, at Mt. San Calogero, adjacent to the picturesque coastal town of Sciacca (about 100 km south of Palermo), we will visit the surface expression of an extensive karst system linked to uprising geothermal fluids. Furthermore, we will discuss main characteristics of the Sciacca Geothermal Field and its connection to deep mantle-derived fluids. Outcrop data will be integrated with both 2D seismic lines and exploration well logs showing the stratigraphy and structure of the deep aquifer. Given the presence of faults and joints in the outcrops, this field trip can provide the participants with valuable insights into naturally fractured reservoirs at the sub-seismic scale.
This half-day field trip provides you with a unique opportunity to visit one of the three salt mines still active in Sicily, located nearby the town of Realmonte in the southern part of the island. The Realmonte mine (Italkali salt mine) has been producing the ‘80s and offers the possibility to observe a considerable thickness (400 to 600 m) of halite and kainite, as well as anhydrite, that were deposited at the peak of the Messinian Salinity Crisis during Late Miocene. Plastic tectonic deformation is another characteristic of this salt deposit adding to its peculiarity. The mine is also famous for some spectacular sculptures carved in the salt by mine workers.
Note: To secure your spot on the field trip kindly register your interest. Once the registration deadline has passed, we will inform you if your place on the trip is confirmed and share a payment link with you.
Are you ready to take the next step in your career? Or maybe open to explore new opportunities within your company? Or perhaps you ready for a complete transformation but you don’t know how to take the first steps?
If the answer is YES for any of these questions, join this 3-hour workshop during which you will become more...
We will be using some fun design-thinking tools and carbonate-related metaphors to explore and plan.
All you need is your open, playful mind, your notebook and pen or pencil.
Anita É. Csoma, Ph.D. is a leadership innovator, business leader, and forever geoscientist with almost two decades of experience working in European and North American Energy Companies such as MOLGroup, ConocoPhillips, and Shell International E&P. Anita has been fortunate to experience working in world-class research teams, designing and building interdisciplinary teams, developing, managing, and implementing portfolio of projects across multiple organizations, and transforming large organizations to support business needs. Her leadership philosophy has always been: “Lead the People, not the Numbers” resulting in high-performing and engaged individuals, teams, and organizations with superior business results. Anita É., Csoma, Ph.D. | LinkedIn
In 2023 Anita startedScale.Up Foundations LLCto support innovative companies and organizations in their scale-up process to expedite growth, andLeading Barefoot, to inspire and teach as many people as possible to think unconventional and achieve beyond their dream.
She is a faculty member of SEED (School for Executive Education and Development) in Budapest, Hungary, where she is teaching various leadership courses, amongst which she designed and actively teaching an Aspiring Women Leaders program for female leaders and rising talents. Focus Programs - Aspiring Women Leaders • SEED Executive School (seed-uni.com) Anita continues her passion and support for geoscience and the energy industry through her role as President-Elect for AAPG Europe.
This one-day field trip will provide an introduction to a Miocene-Pliocene succession of southern Sicily, which includes outcrops of the Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC), as well as the Messinian-Zanclean GSSP (Global Boundary Stratotype Sections and Point) and Zanclean stratotype. The MSC sedimentary record consists of an evaporitic-carbonate unit at the base (the Basal Limestone), overlain the Lower Gypsum unit, in turn overlain by the Upper Gypsum unit, and sealed by transgressive chalk deposits of the Trubi Fm. The Lower Gypsum unit (massive gypsum with cm-sized selenite crystals) will be visited along the beach of Siculiana Marina (about 15 km NW of Agrigento).
Next, we will visit near Capo Rossello (about 10 km NW of Agrigento) an outcrop of the Upper Gypsum unit consisting of clay-gypsum cycles and overlain by the Trubi Fm. The latter, at Scala dei Turchi beach, consists of chalk deposits arranged in a spectacular thick succession (~120 m thick) interpreted as astronomically-controlled depositional cycles. The uppermost interval of the MSC sedimentary record, including the Messinian-Zanclean GSSP, will be observed along the beach of Eraclea Minoa located about 20 km NW of Capo Rossello.
For those delegates not going on the salt mine field trip, we offer these activities at no extra charge
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