This course focuses on the key geoscience concepts that underpin oil and gas field development and reservoir management. Concepts of depositional systems and stratigraphic variability are illustrated through a combination of lectures, classroom exercises and outcrop examples of typical sandstone reservoir rocks. These concepts are placed in the context of field appraisal, development planning and reservoir management, emphasizing those geoscience topics that are critical to understanding other integrated petroleum engineering disciplines. The course describes the geological controls on reservoir characteristics, including rock properties, fluid saturation distribution and reservoir heterogeneities. The reservoir geology of the nearby coastal outcrops is compared to genetically analogous reservoirs in the North Sea and nearby Wessex basin and implications for understanding reservoir behavior are reviewed. Reservoir characteristics are related to awareness level construction of static geo-cellular models, dynamic flow models, development plans, production forecasts and the workflows of integrated field development teams. The course is intended to integrate geoscience at a level appropriate for subsurface engineers at a cross-discipline level.
Petroleum engineers and production engineers with 0 to 5 years of experience who have a limited understanding of the geoscience concepts and methods used to evaluate reservoir rocks and predict fluid flow behavior during production. Junior level geoscientists, or those new to the NW European petroleum provinces will also benefit.
You will Learn:
- Basic petroleum systems
- Depositional system concepts
- North Sea and Wessex Basin reservoir behavior and style
- The Static Model
- Production geoscience in the field life cycle
Course Content:
- Petroleum Systems: sedimentary basins; tectonics & stratigraphy; source rocks; reservoir/seal systems; burial history; petroleum maturation, migration, entrapment & preservation
- Depositional systems: clastic & carbonate environments and associated reservoir rocks; structural & stratigraphic heterogeneities; stratigraphic concepts; subsurface recognition in cores, well logs & seismic; outcrop examples of deltaic sand bodies
- North Sea and Wessex basin plays
- The Static Model: trap configuration & influence on external geometries; internal reservoir characteristics & depositional controls; pore systems & their influence on fluid storage and flow behavior; estimating hydrocarbon volumes in-place; why rocks are heterogeneous and how to deal with the consequences for fluid upscaling
- Production geoscience in the field lifecycle: appraisal, development planning and production/reservoir management; geological influence on field development with selected case studies
