Duration:

This is a seven-day workshop that includes two days of travel and five days of coursework.

Who Should Attend:

This course is designed for petroleum engineers, geologists, geophysicists, petrophysicists, and supervisory personnel who are responsible for executing field development programs focused on primary-, secondary-, or tertiary-recovery projects in conventional terrigineous-clastic reservoirs. The geologic and engineering concepts and practices that are introduced are applicable to reservoirs spanning all depositional settings.

Purpose:

Students’ understanding of modeling and their ability to model geological features affecting reservoir performance will improve through the collection, observation, interpretation, and modeling of geologic, petrophysical, and engineering data. Methods for the cooperative collection, analysis, and interpretation of data to most efficiently appraise reservoir size and characteristics will be presented and practiced. Superb outcrops reveal complex but interpretable geologic features influencing reservoir development. Outcrop observations will be incorporated into geocellular models using wireline logs, cores, and petrophysical data collected from nearby boreholes. With this typical subsurface dataset, geocellular and reservoir models wil be evaluated and simulated within the five-day course.

The advantages and disadvantages to the implementation of various geologic concepts (e.g., lithostratigraphy vs. chronostratigraphy) and modeling steps (e.g., gridding, layering, property distribution) will be discussed and tested.

Description:

Engineers, geoscientists, and petrophysicists involved in field appraisal, development planning, and production forecasting work as teams using data collected from cores, outcrops, and wellbores (i.e., wireline logs, routine core analysis) to characterize, model, and simulate hydrocarbon reservoirs formed in continental to shallow-marine depositional settings. The identification, interpretation, and modeling of lithofacies, facies associations, and depositional systems from core, wireline-log, and outcrop data are emphasized as a method to realistically control rock-property distribution in geocellular models. Emphasis is placed on using stochastic or deterministic methods to accurately model the geological features controlling fluid flow. Teamwork culminates in a geocellular model evaluation and simulation; and a proposal of field development plans to increase reserves, accelerate field-production rate, or both.

Content:

Day 1: Core laboratory, outcrop visits, and field exercises: deltaic & shoreface reservoirs

• Deltaic and shoreface sedimentologic and stratigraphic concepts
• Core description and wireline-log calibration
• Stratigraphic correlation and reservoir zonation

Day 2: Outcrop visits, field exercises, and initial model construction: deltaic & shoreface reservoirs

• Field-scale structure and stratigraphy
• Facies association petrophysics, stratigraphic relationships, and dimensions
• Controls on vertical- and horizontal-permeability trends

Day 3: Outcrop visits, field exercises, continued model construction, and team presentations/discussions: fluvial & shoreface reservoirs

• Sequence-stratigraphic controls on facies distribution
• Methods to optimize model size and cell dimensions
• Facies and petrophysical modeling

Day 4: Outcrop visits, field exercises, and continued model construction: fluvial reservoirs

• Fluvial sedimentologic and stratigraphic concepts
• Facies modeling: deterministic versus stochastic methods

Day 5: Geocellular model review and discussion

• Modeling exercise using models representing various depositional environments
• Effects of geologic representation on history-matching
• Forecasting exercise
• Team presentations of modeling and simulation results

Costs:

Fees per person: TBD.  Fee includes:

• Five-day seminar
• Field guide and exercise materials
• Transportation during seminar
• Lunch, snacks, and drinks during the seminar

Additional costs (responsibility of attendees): Transportation to and from Salt Lake City, Utah;  meals other than lunch during the five-day course; hotel costs

Contact:  Dr. John H. Hornbrook to register. Space is limited.

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Instructor: Dr. Robert Tye