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Quantitative Clastics Laboratory IA Newsletter

______________________________________________________________________________ QCL IA Newsletter, Spring 2009 In This Issue REPORT FROM 2008 ANNUAL MEETING 2009 FALL ANNUAL MEETING PLANS SUBMARINE MASS FAILURES CONF. SANDatabase UPDATE

• New Data, Reading Shelf VISITING WITH QCL MEMBERS COMPLETED 2008 RESEARCH NEW RESEARCH PLANS 2009-2012 NEW DATA SETS IN DEEP WATER UPCOMING PRESENTATIONS THE SUMMER Contact Information REPORT FROM 2008 ANNUAL MEETING to the San Juan Basin, Northwest New Mexcio “Timing is everything.” Houston being hit by a hurricane less than one week prior to our annual meeting was not something we had planned on. Although this forced many members to make some hard decisions to cancel, family and other issues clearly took precedent. Nevertheless, several member from “low hurricane areas” such as Calgary, Canada ☺ were able to attend and we had a really great time both in reviewing materials, examining core from the El Vado Sandstone and examining the shelf sands of the El Vado and Tocito sandstones in northwest New Mexico, as well as several stops led by Bill Ambrose to examine the more wave-dominated nature of the Picture Cliffs Sandstones, a coal gas reservoir in southern Colorado.

This trip was a good opportunity to examine some of the units that will be the focus of Darrin Burton’s doctoral work over the next 3-4 years. There are incredible exposures of hummocky cross-stratified units that we believe to be a distal equivalent to the more tidal shelfal sand reservoirs of the Toctio Sandstone located in more western areas of the basin, forming some of the largest oil field in the SJB.

Extremely large hummocky beds characterize the more distal Tocito interval in the San Juan Basin. The size of these bedforms, which produce gas in the subsurface, imply extremely large storms impinging on the seaway during Cretaceous time. Although many of our member companies were unable to send representatives to the meeting in September, we were able to provide a “make up” review in the BEG Core Facility Houston offices in October which made attending much more feasible. So we hope everyone is on the same page. THE QCLIA 2009 ANNUAL MEETING: AUSTIN, TEXAS The QCLIA 2009 Annual Meeting will be held Thursday November 5th and Friday November 6th at the Bureau of Economic Geology conference center on the Pickle Research Campus in Austin,

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Texas. This meeting will include 1.5 days of presentation and discussion of 2009 research program results and discussions of the ongoing research directions, and we will demonstrate the new additions to the SANDatabase. We look for ward to presentations by Peter Flaig and Dolores van der Kolk regarding their ongoing research on the North Slope of Alaska. The last half of Friday will be spent in a ½ day course to demonstrate the process through which the research team integrates seismically-derived attribute images with ArcGIS and ERMAPPER to produce morphometric databases for exploration and development of various types of basin systems. Computers and software will be provided. A preliminary list of presentation includes: For Thursday: • The QCLIA 2009 Research Program with an

update on staff, resources, science direction • How do channels flow and interact

stratigraphically? Lessons from a study in offshore Indonesia

• Utilizing Lidar as a tool for collecting sedimentologic and petrographic data from core and outcrop.

• Preliminary studies in reservoir architecture of tidal sand deposits, Sego Sandstone, Tocito Sandstone, distal Tocito shelf sands, northwest New Mexico.

• Quantifying reservoir architecture in the fluvial/coastal plain deposits of the Prince Creek,, North Slope Alaska,

• Nature and origin of the Pebble Shale, North Slope Alaska.

• Shelf sand analogs in offshore North Coast Trinidad - from an integrated seismic and sedimentologic analysis

• Architectural response of shelf margin deltas to syn-depositional tectonics

• Nature of deltas re-visited – time to reexamine our models and paradigms

Friday morning: • Nature of and regional influences on

Cretaceous age fluvial-deltaic and deep water sands in the northern GOM margin.

• Mass transport deposits – continued literature analysis and high resolution observations on MTC architecture

• Fill, “strip” and spill models of minibasin filling, distal Sigsbee Salt escarpment, GOM

• MTC geometries and pressure conditions in distal GOM settings and their influence on structure and stratigraphy

• Quantitative seismic geomorphology of early Pleistocene basin floor fans and leveed channels in abyssal plain settings, GOM

• 2009 Research Plans. We will forward logistics information as soon as we have it available. Keep an eye out. We look forward to seeing you all in Austin! SUBMARINE MASS FAILURES CONFERENCE to follow 2009 QCL Meeting

The QCLIA Fall 2009 Annual Meeting will be held immediately preceding the 4th International Symposium on Submarine Mass Movements and Their Consequences (conference webpage: http://www.beg.utexas.edu/indassoc/dm2/Conference2009/home.htm) to be held Saturday November 7th through Wednesday November 12th on the UT Pickle Research Campus. A field trip led by Dr. Pete Rose on the Geology of the Texas Wine Country will beheld on Saturday November 7th, followed by the opening ceremonies for the conference. Subsequent three days will be filled with over 90 oral and poster presentations regarding the deposits and processes of mass transport/ shelf margin failures. The conference will include large flume model demonstrations, a core workshop and a digital field trip through seismically-imaged margins around the world. Dr. Lorena Moscardelli is the Chairman of this international conference. Early registration is open. SAND DATABASE

A great deal of quantitative data has been added to the SANDatabase. We have designed a new structure to search for analogs by setting and continue to add summary sheets, research reports, slide presentations, posters as well as mapped horizons, grids and maps of important interpretations. Some of the large inclusions of data recently added include: • Atoka channels morphometric, including

calculated process parameters, mapped horizons and completed maps, core images and descriptions

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• Ghana deep water tertiary age channel and levee morphometrics

• Summary work on rift basins in the Sunda Shelf of Indonesia

• El Vado unconventional gas shelf sand data on sedimentology, core description, logs and correlations, thickness maps, measured section, thin section descriptions.

• Abundant quantitative data on deep water sand correlation lengths

• Searchable access database on deep water architecture, sedimentology and morphometrics

• New spreadsheets on the nature of deltaic architecture

In addition, to new data, we have added a new format for locating data that is depositional setting based, keyed to a continental margin profile. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Screen dump from the in progress Access Database of Deep water Architectures, designed and populated by Glenn Fiedler. Available for download from the SANDatabase.

Finally, on the front page of the SAND link you will find something called “What is on the QCL Reading List?” This is intended to be a monthly location for interesting papers that we are reading, and that we think might be of key interest to our member geoscientists. Some will be old and some will be new, but we think you will find all of them worth a read.

Tarant #1 Core through the Atoka. These data form the basis for analysis of channel form versus flow processes in Atoka Channels of the Fort Worth Basin. All of these research results are in the SANDatabase for download

VISTING WITH QCL IA MEMBERS

We enjoyed another productive month in October 2008 following our annual meeting with ENI_AGIP Geoscientist Dr. Daniel Minisini. During his visit we focused on the process of moving the images that had been extracted from 3D seismic data in the Adriatic into ArcGIS and the analyses of those images using ArcGIS tools. Graduate Researcher Brian Kiel and Sean Sullivan were very helpful in conveying the processes that they and others had developed to Dr. Minisini. Some of this material will form the basis for the Fall Short Course to be held during the 2009 annual meeting.

In addition, to hosting Dr. Minisini in an Industry Sabbatical, we enjoyed productive visits from Shell geoscientists to plan the research program in shelf delta analysis, and hope to host the StatoilHydro geoscientists before the end of April as well as another review meeting with Shell. In addition, Dr. Wood will present a talk at the 2009 Noble Energy Technology Conference in mid-April, and we will send a summary poster to Talisman Energy for presentation at their annual internal technology conference in April as well. If any of you have similar internal conferences that you desire our involvement in, please don’t hesitate to ask.

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The Spring is an opportunity to visit many companies. January involved a trip to StatoilHydro in Bergen, Norway to present research results and talk about future plans. February was a chance to visit with Anadarko in Houston and early March involved a visit by Wood and Moscardelli to IMP’s offices in Mexico City to spend several days visiting about research and its applicability to issues of exploration and development in the southern GOM. We are happy to make all efforts to visit company offices in the U.S. and abroad. Please let us know if we can arrange a trip to spend some time with your geoscientists, or if you would like to spend some time in Austin working with our research group.

Seismic image from offshore Trinidad showing the complex surface geometry of an offlapping clinoform. Image by LMoscardelli.

ENI_Agip Geoscientist Dr. Daniel Minisini spent several weeks with QCL researchers looking at methods for interpreting seismic images in ArcGIS.

COMPLETED 2008 RESEARCH ATOKA CHANNEL RESEARCH Vishal Maharaj completed a significant master’s research project in the Atoka Formation of northern Fort Worth Basin. Vishal’s research involved integration of seismic mapping, core description and log analysis toward an understanding of the morphometrics, processes and nature of the deposits that comprise the Atoka Lower, Middle and Upper intervals in the Fort Worth Basin of northern Texas. These data are available for download and use in exploration and development modeling in these important hydrocarbon intervals.

BARBADOS TERTIARY-AGE DEEP WATER DEPOSITS RESEARCH

Nysha Chaderton has completed four years of field, subsurface and seismic based research into the sedimentology, facies, depositional elements and character of coarse grained deep water deposits of the Scotland and Oceanic Formations in the forearc basin setting of the Tertiary-age Barbados Accretionary Prism. Her research was supported by a grant from BHPBilliton. Her study included difficult to access measured outcrop sections, tied into an overall depositional framework for the Scotland, as well as petrographic studies on the composition and diagenetic history of the Scotland sandstones. These data led to a better understanding of the evolution of the Tobago and Barbados basins, as well as the island of Barbados itself. Nysha has taken a position with ExxonMobil in Houston. Image to the left shows quantitative data on channel point bar sizes from the Atoka Lower, Middle and Upper units. Size matters!

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TRINIDAD RESERVOIR ARCHITECTURE OF FLUVIAL DELTAIC SYSTEMS

Tricia Alvarez has completed 2.5 years of work on an extremely large 3D seismic database used to evaluate the seismic geomorphologic character of the most recent lowstand sequences of the Trinidad eastern shelf. She has mapped several surfaces in the upper 1 million years of strata, whose extents are throughout the entire Columbus Basin. Tricia is continuing at UT for her PhD. MORPHOLOGY AND PROSPECTIVITY OF RIFT BASINS, SUNDA SHELF INDONESIA Darrin Burton has completed a 1.5 year master’s degree examining the reservoir and seal character and morphology in the rift basins that characterize the West Natuna Basin of offshore Indonesia. Darrin’s work involved 3D seismic analysis, integrated with available logs and regional analogs to interpret the paleo-geomorphology of these stratigraphically deep, structurally complex intervals. His work included observations on the plays and prospectivity of these settings. Darrin is continuing for a PhD, currently involved in an outcrop study of the reservoir architecture of the Sego and Tocito Sandstones.

Fence diagram of basin/fold morphology in the West Natuna Basin, done by Darrin Burton as part of his Master’s Degree work.

SEDIMENTOLOGY AND REGIONAL TRENDS IN THE EL VADO TIGHT GAS SANDS, SAN JUAN BASIN, NEW MEXICO

Tiffany Hedayati completed her master’s degree in December following a two year study of the tight gas sands of the El Vado Sandstone of eastern San Juan Basin, New Mexico. Her work involved examination of the stratigraphy, sedimentology and petrography of both northern and southern exposures of the El Vado, as well as a regional correlation and subsequent net sand and isopach maps of these units. These data led to observations on the regional relationships between the El Vado , the Dalton and the Tocito sandstones, and on the variables controlling reservoir thickness trends. Tiffany has taken a full time position with ExxonMobil in Houston.

PLANNED RESEARCH 2009-2011

In Fall of 2008, two new PhD Candidates joined the group. In the Spring of 2009 we were pleased to put forward Vishal Maharaj and Darrin Burton as candidates to continue on for their PhD. In addition, we will admit Dolores Van der Kolk to begin her PhD program in Fall 2009 and Peter Flaig will begin his 2-3 year post-doctoral appointment. The program also averages about 2-3 master’s students with ~ 2 year programs. This recent influx of new scientific talent in the QCL IA will drive our research focus for the next several years. In addition, we will continue to entertain new opportunities as they arise. Research plans include: Stratigraphy and Sedimentology of Key Depositional Systems of the North Slope of Alaska • Many of you said two years ago that you would like to see some work in the North Slope of Alaska, so we have been working on that program. Peter Flaig will be joining the research program in late Fall of 2009 as a post-doctoral researcher and Dolores van der Kolk is finishing up her master’s work in Alaska and will continue at UT for her doctorate. Both of these scientists bring a strong knowledge base and experience in study of the structure and stratigraphy of northern Alaska to the research program. Peter and Dolores have spent the past 4 years in the field examining many of the Cretaceous reservoir and source rocks that characterize the North Slope fields. We are planning an extensive data acquisition of digital images this

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summer to compliment the field work that Peter has already done. As new data becomes publically available we hope to expand the work that Peter and others are doing in the northern Alaska region.

Dolores van der Kolk busy planning a summer field campaign on the North Slope of Alaska. The cliffs shown across the river provide a near 15 km long continuous exposure of the Prince Creek Formation. Architecture of shelf and shoreline reservoir systems • Darrin Burton is digitally mapping the

detailed architecture of reservoir and seal bodies in outcrops of the Sego Sandstone and associated units, and of the Tocito Sandstone near shore and distal shelf deposits. He is currently scanning whole core associated with these units to generate Vshale transforms that can be used in outcrop Lidar studies. In addition, he plans to work newly discovered outcrops of the distal Tocito deposits. His work should lead to significantly more quantitative, three-dimensional data on these types of reservoir systems for modeling and development.

• Stefan Punette is in the first year of his

master’s degree, working with an extensive 3D data volume and shallow geotechnical data to define the morphology and architecture of shelf sands in offshore northern Trinidad.

• Dr. Lorena Moscardelli is integrating 3D seismic and well logs data, as well as literature analogs to improve our understanding of the distribution of facies within shelf edge deltas, as they interact with different varieties of shelf edge structure. Her work is partially funded by a grant from Shell Nigeria.

Basin fill architecture and morphology in complex tectonic settings (GOM Focus) • Jessica Morgan is pursuing her master’s

research on the quantitative seismic geomorphology of leveed channel deposits and fans of early Pleistocene age in the Mad Dog area of the Sigsbee Escarpment, GOM.

• Kadira Singh (MS Candidate) is examining

the nature of a family of mass transport deposits that characterize the abyssal plain during Pleistocene times in the Mad Dog area of the Sigsbee Escarpment, GOM.

• Kurtus Woolf (PhD Candidate) is starting a

study of the controls on distribution and nature of late Cretaceous sands (i.e., the Gray Sand and the Tuscaloosa sands) in the northern Gulf of Mexico. This will involve examining the affect that older pre-Tertiary structural frameworks have on sand distribution, and mapping and petrographic work in core, logs and seismic, as well as outcrop, to examine the affect of provenance on sandstone occurrence and character.

Figure shown to the left is of a pseudo-gamma log draped over the Ferron Sandstone outcrops. This log was simulated by Darrin Burton using the return intensity from Lidar data.

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RMS Amplitude map from the early Pleistocene of the Mad Dog area showing nw-to-se trending deep marine channel and fan deposits.

Comparison of salt front architecture and the role it plays in sediment bypass to the abyssal plain is a focus of the deep water research program. Mini-basin architecture developing immediately proximal of the salt wall is a topic of Jie Huang, Wie Raun and Vishal Maharaj’s research.

• Vishal Maharaj’s PhD research is re-

examining the manner in which mini-basin’s fill, geometry of the fill packages, seismic character and morphology of facies and elements that characterize the fills and what the basin stratigraphy tells us about controls on basin deposition and distribution of lithology within these settings.

• Wie Ruan (PhD Candidate, Chinese

Scholar) is finishing up a study on the character and morphology of mass transport deposits within a mini-basin setting in the Mad Dog area. He is attempting to predict the lithology and causal mechanisms of these deposits through their character.

• Jie Huang (PhD Candidate, Chinese

Scholar) is finishing up a significant body of work involving detailed seismic and log study of mini-basin facies, geomorphology and processes in the Mad Dog area of the Sigsbee Escarpment, GOM. An interesting model of fill, “strip” and spill will be presented at the annual QCL meeting.

NEW DATA SETS IN DEEP WATER

We have received several new deep water data sets for study including one from Plains Energy in the Taranaki Basin of New Zealand (above) and more recently one from ConocoPhillips in the Heidrun area of the North Sea (below).

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Data courtesy of Vanco, Inc.

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Courtesy of bp and

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2009 AAPG PRESENTATIONS IN DENVER, COLORADO JUNE 2009

The QCL IA researchers are planning the following activities at the annual AAPG meeting in early June in Denver, Colorado. As always the materials will be available for download on the Members Only Website prior to the meeting.

PRESENTER TOPIC THEME Oral Poster Room/Day/Time

Wood, L.J.

Deltas and Turbidites in Martian Lake Settings: Implications for the Occurrence of Organic Matter, Water Body Distribution and Sediment Dispersal

Theme X: Energy Minerals in the Solar System - Resources for the 21st Century X

Tuesday 06/09/2009 8:00 AM, 108/110/112

Wood, L.J.

Session Co-Chair with Henry Posamentier "3-D Seismic Geomodeling"

Theme XIV - ORAL: 3-D Seismic Geomodeling X

Singh, K., and Wood, L.J.

Geometry and nature of modern and ancient mass transport deposits

Theme XV: SEPM Student Academic Research X

Exhibition Hall Tues June 9th

8:30 - 12:00

Morgan, J. and Wood, L.J.

Quantitative Seismic Geomorphologic analysis of early Pliocene-age fans outboard of the Sigsbee Escarpment, Mad Dog Area, northern Gulf of Mexico

Theme V: 3-D Interaction of Tectonics and Sedimentation I X

RM 205/207 Tuesday 06/09/2009 8:00 AM

Shew, R., Studlick, J. and Wood, L.

Deep-Water Architectures and Statistics

Theme I: Deep water core and outcrop analogs - Comparison with Subsurface and Reservoir Prediction X

Exhibition Hall Tuesday 8:30 - 12:00

Maharaj, V. and Wood, L.J.

A Quantitative Paleo-Geomorphic Study of the Fluvio-Deltaic Reservoirs in the Atoka Interval, Fort Worth Basin, Texas, U.S.A.

Theme III: Siliciclastic Sedimentology and Sequence Analysis for Improved Reservoir Prediction I X

RM 605/607, 10:55 AM - 11:15 AM

Huang, J., Wood, L. and Ruan, W.

Fill, Strip and Spill model of minibasin sedimentation, Mad Dog area, Gulf of Mexico

3-D Interaction of Tectonics and Sedimentation X

Exhibition Hall Wednesday 8:30 -

12:00

Ruan, W., Wood, L. and Huang, J.

Mass-transport deposits in distal confined mini-basin settings, Mad Dog area, Gulf of Mexico

Stratigraphy and Sedimentation X

Exhibition Hall Monday 8:30 -

12:00 Dunlap, D., Moscardelli, L., Hornbach,M. Wood, L.

Potential Casual Mechanisin for MTC generation of the Northwest African Shelf

Theme X - The impacts of Impacts X

Room 108-112, Wed 2:40

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THE SUMMER Summer is the best time to do field work in North America. July will find Darrin Burton (PhD Candidate) in the field for data collection in the Sego Sandstone of eastern Utah, interspersed with a summer internship with Newfield Energy in Denver, Colorado. In addition, a significant field program is planned in the North Slope of Alaska deposits of the Prince Creek to be carried out by Peter Flaig (incoming Post-doc currently with the University of Alaska at Fairbanks) and Dolores Van der Kolk (incoming PhD Candidate, currently with the University of Alaska at Fairbanks). The extent of this program will depend on response we receive for funding this program in LiDAR outcrop data collection for integration with detailed outcrop studies previously carried out by this field crew.

Photo by Peter Flaig. Outcrops of the Prince Creek Formation. These same units occur in the subsurface further north. Continuous exposure offer opportunity to examine these highly heterolithic deposit types in outcrop, and integrate those observations with subsurface 3D seismic. Following instructing our UT undergraduate field camp in eastern Utah during late May, Lesli Wood will attend AAPG to be followed by a one week stint leading the 10th grade group of GeoFORCE in a field trip across eastern Nevada and western Arizona. Several students will be working on their research at the BEG over the summer supported by the QCL IA. Kurtus Woolf (PhD Candidate), Thomas Brothers (PhD Candidate), Tricia Alvarez (PhD Candidate), Vishal Maharaj (PhD Candidate), and Anmar Davila (MS 2010) will all spend their summers working on their research programs. In addition, Stefan Punette (MS 2010) will spend time in both Trinidad and Austin continuing his masters work. Jessica Morgan (MS 2010) and Kadira Singh (MS 2009) will be enjoying internships in Houston. Finally, Jie Huang and Wie Ruan (Chinese Scholars) will be finishing up two years of research with the QCL IA (Wie Ruan also works with the RioMAR program), writing up their observations regarding deep water sedimentation and minibasin fill processes and returning to Beijing at the end of August. We look forward to working with them until the termination of their program. They have added an immense talent to the research program.

Peter Flaig

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Contacting QCL IA Staff

The table below provides contact information for the primary personnel of the Quantitative Clastics Laboratory Industrial Associates Program.

Lesli J. Wood, Researcher Email: lesli.wood@beg.utexas.edu Lorena Moscardelli, Researcher Email: moscardellil@mail.utexas.edu Dallas Dunlap, Researcher Email: dallas.dunlap@beg.utexas.edu John Andrews, Programmer Email: john.andrews@beg.utexas.edu Paula Beard, Webmaster Email: paula.beard@beg.utexas.edu

Sean Sullivan,GRA Email: sullivansmi@mail.utexas.edu Vishal Maharaj, GRA Email: maharaj.vishal@gmail.com

Tiffany Hedayati, GRA Email: thedayati@gmail.com

Tricia Alvarez, GRA Email: talvarez@mail.utexas.edu Brian Kiel, GRA Email: brian.a.kiel@gmail.com Stefan Punette, GRA Jessica Morgan, GRA Email:morganj@mail.utexas.edu Darrin Burton, GRA Email:darrinburton@hotmail.com Anmar Davila, GRA Email:Anmar.davila@mail.utexas.edu Kadira Singh, GRA Email: Kadira.singh@mail.utexas.edu Jie Huang, visiting Chinese scholar Email: jie.huang@mail.utexas.edu Kurtus Woolf, GRA Thomas Brothers, GRA

QCL IA Website: http://www.beg.utexas.edu/indassoc/dm2/index.htm