Explorer Foundation Update

Recently the AAPG Foundation received a generous bequest gift – in excess of $600,000 – from longtime member Frank Adler. It was completely unexpected.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Division Column DPA

The Division members need to advance our knowledge about communications and data management in this new exploration world. New oil is found by new ideas and technologies and we need to know how best to serve our members.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Unconventional resources represent a bright opportunity for the United States' economic and energy future, but that is in no sense guaranteed. A misinformed public debate about the impacts and merits of hydraulic fracturing in particular and the oil industry in general threatens that future.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Cindy Yeilding of BP America discusses the production history and geology of one of the world’s most prolific hydrocarbon super basins.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

The resurgence of the Permian Basin in the United States led directly to the concept of the “super basin”: a mature basin that can be rejuvenated to produce as much or more oil and gas than it has so far. Another archetype for super basins lies 1,000 miles southeast of the Permian, in the onshore/offshore Sureste Basin of Mexico.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Can super basins save the planet? IHS Markit, the international industry analysis firm, estimates the world will need to replace production of more than 14.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent annually by the year 2040.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Division Column DEG

Our industry, science and profession have been taking note of the importance of being prominent and proactive in assuring the public and other stakeholders that the energy extraction industry implements environmental stewardship in a manner equivalent to its skill and innovation in extracting the oil, gas and minerals that society needs.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

The Energy and Environmental Science & Technology Directorate at the Idaho National Laboratory has scientists working diligently to better understand how fluids might flow through the small pores in shales where the silt- and clay-size particles can measure as small as less than 0.004 millimeters.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Middle East Blog

The fourth edition of the AAPG/EAGE 'Tight Reservoirs in the Middle East” GTW took place on 27 – 28 November 2018 at the Downtown Rotana Hotel, Manama, Bahrain. This year we had 80 attendees from ten different countries.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Middle East Blog

Registration is NOW OPEN for the AAPG Maximizing Asset Value: Integrating Geoscience with Reservoir Management & Facilities Optimization GTW!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

For well over a century there have been conflicting indications of the strength of the crust and of faults and what controls them.  Much of our ignorance comes quite naturally from the general inaccessibility of the crust to measurement--in contrast with our understanding of the atmosphere, which is much more accessible to observation as well as more rapidly changing.  Crustal strength is best understood in deforming sedimentary basins where the petroleum industry has made great contributions, particularly in deforming petroleum basins because of the practical need to predict. In this talk we take a broad look at key issues in crustal strength and deformation and what we can learn from boreholes, earthquakes, active fault systems, and toy models.

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Request a visit from John Suppe!

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

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

Paleozoic North America has experienced multiple mountain building events, from Ordovician to Permian, on all margins of the continent. These have had a profound effect on the resulting complex basins and their associated petroleum systems. Subsequent uplift, erosion and overprinting of these ancient systems impedes the direct observation of their tectonic history. However, the basin sedimentary records are more complete, and provide additional insights into the timing and style of the mountain building events. In this study, we employ ~90 1D basin models, ~30 inverse flexural models, isopachs, and paleogeographic maps to better understand the Paleozoic history of North America.

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Request a visit from Kurt W. Rudolph!

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

Local sea-level changes are not simply a function of global ocean volumes but also the interactions between the solid Earth, the Earth’s gravitational field and the loading and unloading of ice sheets. Contrasting behaviors between Antarctica and Scotland highlight how important the geologic structure beneath the former ice sheets is in determining the interactions between ice sheets and relative sea levels.

Request a visit from Alex Simms!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

President Biden has laid out a bold and ambitious goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions in the United States by 2050.  The pathway to that target includes cutting total greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and eliminating them entirely from the nation’s electricity sector by 2035. The Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management will play an important role in the transition to net-zero carbon emissions by reducing the environmental impacts of fossil energy production and use – and helping decarbonize other hard-to abate sectors.

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Request a visit from Jennifer Wilcox!

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.

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Request a visit from Sherilyn Williams-Stroud!

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)
VG Abstract

The carbonate sequences that were deposited in the now exhumed Tethyan Ocean influence many aspects of our lives today, either by supplying the energy that warms our homes and the fuel that powers our cars or providing the stunning landscapes for both winter and summer vacations. They also represent some of the most intensely studied rock formations in the world and have provided geoscientists with a fascinating insight into the turbulent nature of 250 Million years of Earth’s history. By combining studies from the full range of geoscience disciplines this presentation will trace the development of these carbonate sequences from their initial formation on the margins of large ancient continental masses to their present day locations in and around the Greater Mediterranean and Near East region. The first order control on growth patterns and carbonate platform development by the regional plate-tectonic setting, underlying basin architecture and fluctuations in sea level will be illustrated. The organisms that contribute to sequence development will be revealed to be treasure troves of forensic information. Finally, these rock sequences will be shown to contain all the ingredients necessary to form and retain hydrocarbons and the manner in which major post-depositional tectonic events led to the formation of some of the largest hydrocarbon accumulations in the world will be demonstrated.

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Request a visit from Keith Gerdes!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)

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