N096 Recent Depositional and Stratigraphic Analogues for Fluvial and Shallow Marine Reservoirs (South Carolina, USA)
N096 Recent Depositional and Stratigraphic Analogues for Fluvial and Shallow Marine Reservoirs (South Carolina, USA)
Business Impact: To first hand experience the scale and complexity of facies relationships is invaluable. By attending the course, participants will gain a greater understanding of marginal marine shorelines and the associated facies, which would facilitate development of more accurate reservoir models or allow for more targeted exploration wells, ultimately increasing reservoir production potential and overall profitability.
A five-day course conducted principally in the field, with morning discussions and presentations. Approximately 70% of the course time is spent in the field or on a boat, with the remaining 30% equally split between core viewing and classroom lectures.
Participants will learn to:
This intensive field course introduces and links a range of fluvial, deltaic, strandplain, estuarine, barrier island, and tidal channel facies and environments into regional depositional systems. Genetically related depositional environments and their stratigraphic correlation are stressed from the standpoint of subsurface interpretation for prospect evaluation and reservoir development.
Participants will experience the fluvial, deltaic, barrier-island, and estuarine settings along the mesotidal South Carolina coast. This course reveals how geomorphology and lithofacies in shallow-marine deposits are controlled by the hydrodynamic regime (i.e. waves, tidal range). The contrast is striking and profoundly affects stratigraphic interpretations. Additionally, the evolution of Quaternary strata is presented in a chronostratigraphic context. Subsurface data provide lithologic interpretations for progradational (barrier island, deltaic), retrogradational (barrier island, estuarine), and aggradational (valley fill, barrier island) depositional styles. Lateral facies-association and lithofacies changes are discussed from the basin scale (exploration fairways) to the reservoir scale (permeability controls).
Day 0
Day 1: Alluvial-valley and Fluvial Deposits
Day 2: Geology and Evolution of a Mixed-Energy Delta
Day 3: Mesotidal Barrier Island
Day 4: Core Laboratory
Day 5: Mesotidal Estuary and Incised Valley Fill Sequence
Day 6
Exploration and production staff working fluvial and shallow marine environments, including integrated asset teams of geologists, geophysicists, and reservoir and petroleum engineers.
There are no prerequisites for this course, but geoscience participants would benefit from some knowledge of sequence stratigraphy and fluvial through shallow marine facies, such as presented in N251 (Well Log Sequence Stratigraphy: Applications to Exploration and Production) and N410 (Sequence Stratigraphy Applied to Exploration and Production).
Nautilus Training Alliance field courses that visit ancient equivalents of the sediments examined on this course include N451 (Practical Oil-Finders Guide to Siliciclastic Sequence Stratigraphy (Wyoming)), N011 (High Resolution Sequence Stratigraphy: Reservoir Applications (Utah)), N042 (Reservoir Sedimentology and Stratigraphy of Coastal and Shelfal Successions: Deltas, Shorelines and Origins of Isolated Sandstones (Colorado)), and N012 (Reservoir Modeling Field Class (Utah)).
The physical demands for this class are MODERATE according to the Nautilus Training Alliance field course grading system. The class is conducted in sandy and muddy fluvial, deltaic, and strandplain settings of South Carolina. Weather can be cool and damp or hot and humid, depending on the time of year. The longest walk on the class is less than 5 km (2.5 miles) with little to no elevation gain. Most days are spent on a large pontoon boat, with little shade from the sun. There will be several foot excusions onto beaches as well as into swampy and muddy areas where insects are prevalent. Participants may be asked to dig trenches in some areas and should expect to get wet on most days. Buoyancy aids are provided.
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Background
Walter ("Jerry") is a coastal geomorphologist/sedimentologist with over 30 years of professional experience and is a broad based geoscientist with experience in surface mining (heavy mineral, peat, sand & gravel), groundwater pollution and shoreline mapping for contingency planning. Walter has taught and co-taught over 175 week-long seminars on “Modern Clastic Depositional Environments” principally along the South Carolina coastline but also internationally for both the ground water and petroleum industries as well as for academic institutions.
These field seminars have been taught for many energy companies including BP America, Suncor, Conoco/Phillips, Encana, Apache and Chesapeake Energy. He is the founder and president of Athena Technologies, Inc. founded in 1987 specializing in shallow stratigraphic studies of modern depositional systems. Walter has conducted research in Europe on the coastline of France, the Middle East (Kuwait and Abdul Dhabi), Africa (Nigeria), Central America (Panama), the Caribbean and throughout much of the United States including Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands. In 2006 he presented the Annual Honorary Address for the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He has worked on basin projects from the Gulf Coast through the Western Canadian Basin. Walter has published numerous papers on modern clastic deposition ranging from fluvial/alluvial valley topics to the continental shelf margin.
His approach toward teaching field seminars on modern clastic depositional systems is to start with the review of the mechanics/processes of sedimentation and build on the physical evolution of key depositional environments such as the shoreface. This seminar is centered around the modeling of depositional systems (estuaries, shorelines, deltas and alluvial valleys) with ultimately viewing the three dimensional setting as it might appear in the ancient geologic record.
Affiliations and Accreditation
PhD University of South Carolina
Courses Taught
N096: Recent Depositional & Stratigraphic Analogues for Fluvial & Shallow Marine Reservoirs (South Carolina, USA)
N287: Exploiting Clastic Resource Plays in Fluvial Through Shallow Marine Environments: a Modern/Ancient Approach (Alberta, Canada)
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