Oil and Gas
Oil and Gas | Clastics
The Guadalupe and Delaware mountains in West Texas and New Mexico provide unique, world-class exposures of shelfal to slope and basinal depositional settings across mixed clastic and carbonate systems, with seismic-scale, continuous outcrops. These exceptional exposures are ideal for characterizing depositional systems, lateral and vertical facies variations, and sequence-stratigraphic architecture and surfaces. Coeval shelfal to deep-water environments are exposed both downdip and along strike, with clear stratigraphic relationships from a carbonate shelf margin incised by canyons, feeding confined to weakly confined channel systems, connected to distributary lobe complexes and distal fan-fringe sandstones that thin and pinch out onto a basin margin far removed from siliciclastic sediment sources. By the end of this course, participants should have improved their ability to recognize shallow-water clastic and carbonate reservoir systems, deep-water reservoir systems, and unconventional reservoir types, as well as to use sequence stratigraphy to identify and map key surfaces for deep-water exploration. Subsurface data from the Permian Basin are used to tie reservoir, seal, and source play and prospect elements within a sequence-stratigraphic predictive framework.
Business Impact: Participation in this course will aid in de-risking play and prospect elements of costly exploration projects. In addition, it will support understanding of reservoir architecture and connectivity elements relevant to field appraisal and development, including both conventional and unconventional reservoir systems.
Schedule
Duration and Training Method
This is a field course supported by classroom lectures. Nearly every field stop includes exercises designed to illustrate and reinforce the key concepts and methods discussed in the lectures and documented in the course notes.
Course Overview
Learning Outcomes
Participants will learn to:
- Construct basin- and field-scale sequence-stratigraphic frameworks used to predict play and prospect elements.
- Define the architecture of the main archetypes of deep-water reservoirs.
- Discuss exploration for, development of, and production from deep-water reservoirs.
- Relate depositional facies from outcrop to seismic-scale geometries and the overall sequence-stratigraphic framework.
- Apply Walter’s Law and chronostratigraphic principles in core, well-log, and seismic interpretation, and relate these principles to the prediction of play elements and the best productive intervals for conventional and unconventional resources.
- Analyze outcrop exposures of carbonate shelf, ramp, and siliciclastic basinal systems.
- Establish similarities between world-class outcrop exposures and productive intervals in the Permian Basin.
- Analyze sequence stratigraphy in carbonates and mixed carbonate-clastic depositional systems.
- Assess changes in carbonate facies and relate these changes to depositional environments.
Course Content
Day 0: Introductory Meeting
- Arrive in El Paso, Texas
- Introductions, field safety discussion, and overview of the course
- Overnight: El Paso, Texas
Day 1: Overview of Permian Basin Geology and Petroleum Systems
- Lectures on sequence stratigraphy
- Salt Flat Bench section
- West Face — basin overview
- Overnight: Carlsbad, New Mexico
Day 2: Outcrop Examples of Seismic-Scale Geologic Features, Stratal Geometries, and Sequence-Stratigraphic Frameworks of Updip Shelfal Mixed Carbonate-Clastic Systems
- Morning lecture
- Last Chance Canyon area
- McKittrick Canyon slope-to-foreslope facies
- Overnight: Carlsbad, New Mexico
Day 3: Slope Carbonate Systems
- Morning lecture
- Slaughter Canyon
- Rader Slide
- Overnight: Carlsbad, New Mexico
Day 4: Deep-Water Depositional Systems
- Morning lecture
- Guadalupe Canyon
- Distal Delaware lobes
- Overnight: Carlsbad, New Mexico
Day 5: Late-Stage Basin Fill (Castile) and Reservoir Quality in Carbonates
- Morning lecture
- Castile Road outcrop
- Walnut Canyon, Neptunian dykes
- Carlsbad Caverns
- Drive back to El Paso
Who Should Attend and Prerequisites
This field course is designed for geoscientists and engineers involved in the exploration, appraisal, and development of deep-water reservoirs globally, and particularly in the Permian Basin.
Instructors
Rene Jonk
Background
Rene Jonk has more than 25 years of experience in geoscience characterization for petroleum exploration, development and research, having held technical advisor and leadership roles with ExxonMobil and Apache. He has worked extensively across offshore basins of the African and South American margins, as well as the North Sea, onshore North America and the Mediterranean areas. His experience spans across onshore and offshore regions, research, exploration and production, and both conventional and unconventional reservoir systems. Rene’s holistic approach to depositional systems allows him to work across reservoir, seal and source evaluations, at basin to field compartment scales.
Both at ExxonMobil and Apache Rene was responsible for stewarding, developing and delivering classroom and field-based training in stratigraphy and sedimentology, including seismic stratigraphy, clastic reservoir sedimentology, fine-grained rock (seal, source and reservoir) characterization, and deep-water depositional systems. Rene delivered these courses internally, as well as to external student audiences, including the SEPM short course on sequence stratigraphy.
Rene is an honorary professor at the University of Aberdeen, where he teaches formal courses on seal evaluation and reservoir characterization with application to petroleum geology and CCS, mentors Petroleum Geology M.Sc. and Ph.D. projects and is a consultant with the Sand Injectite Research Group. He is an active member of SEPM, EAGE and the Geological Society of London.
Affiliations and Accreditation
PhD University of Aberdeen – Petroleum Geology
MSc Free University of Amsterdam - Geology
Courses Taught
N410: Sequence Stratigraphy Applied to Exploration and Production
N442: Reservoir Architecture of Deep Water Systems (California, USA)
N468: Deep Water Reservoirs – Exploration Risking and Development Characterisation (Distance Learning)
N517: Well Log Sequence Stratigraphy for Exploration and Production (Distance Learning)
N518: Seismic Sequence Stratigraphy for Exploration and Production (Distance Learning)
N526: Sequence Stratigraphic Controls on Deep-Water Reservoirs Architecture: Brushy Canyon Formation,Permian Basin (West Texas and New Mexico, USA)
N747: Deep-Water Depositional Systems (Ainsa Basin, Spain)
N751: Deep-Water Clastic Depositional Systems in a Source-to-Sink Context (Pyrenees, Spain)
Accreditation and Certification
CEU: 4 Continuing Education Units
PDH: 40 Professional Development Hours
Certificate: Certificate Issued Upon Completion
RPS is accredited by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) and is authorized to issue the IACET CEU. We comply with the ANSI/IACET Standard, which is recognised internationally as a standard of excellence in instructional practices.
We issue a Certificate of Attendance which verifies the number of training hours attended. Our courses are generally accepted by most professional licensing boards/associations towards continuing education credits. Please check with your licensing board to determine if the courses and certificate of attendance meet their specific criteria.