DATE November 9-13, 2024
WHERE Houston, Texas
COST $2850 USD/person. ALSO Discounted fee is $2350 USD/person for two or more people from the same company. Unemployed Colleagues/Students: your special discounted fee remains $800/person.
INSTRUCTOR Jeffrey J. Dravis (Consultant – Dravis Interests, Inc., Houston)
FOR Geologists, Geophysicists, Reservoir Engineers, Log Analysts and Managers.
GOAL After this seminar, each delegate will be able to describe and classify typical carbonate rocks, interpret facies relationships, delineate stratigraphic sequences and correlate facies within them, evaluate reservoir quality in limestones and dolostones, and better understand subsurface carbonate plays and reservoirs. This is an excellent refresher course. This five-day, in-house seminar introduces participants to established principles of carbonate sedimentology applied to hydrocarbon exploration and development geology. Using a highly acclaimed, hands-on and rock-based approach, each participant learns to describe typical carbonate rocks, delineate facies and sequences, evaluate reservoir quality, relate carbonates to log and seismic expression, better predict play relationships in the subsurface, and construct a time-stratigraphic facies framework essential for both accurate regional correlation of carbonate sequences and zonation of carbonate reservoirs. Lectures are reinforced with exercises and problems keyed to 10 identical sample rock sets, each containing 56 representative samples from around the world. A core problem with logs, based on a real exploration target, further reinforces principles presented in this seminar. A 750+ page notebook, with color copies of all power point slides shown in lectures, accompanies the course, as well as a reference book with color pictures of samples used in various exercises.
HISTORY OF THIS SEMINAR My flagship seminar has been presented to industry 137 times since 1987, either on a public or private basis. This course is the most popular of all the applied carbonate seminars I teach because of its rock-based and hands-on approach, including the use of a core exercise that ties together many key relationships. It is where hundreds of geoscientists, engineers and managers gained their first exposure to carbonate geology applied to oil and gas exploration and development geology.
INSTRUCTOR’S QUALIFICATIONS Jeffrey J. Dravis (Ph D) is a technical consultant and instructor in carbonate geology with more than 40 years of worldwide industry and field experience in all aspects of applied modern and ancient carbonate geology. This experience includes 8 years with Exxon Production Research Company where he headed up Exxon’s worldwide training efforts in carbonates. Since 1987, he has taught 338 in-house and field seminars. Past consulting projects (200 in number) include reservoir studies in Texas (Paleozoic & Mesozoic, including the Ellenburger), Devonian of W. Canada and Russia, Jurassic and Cretaceous of Gulf of Mexico, and Cretaceous of Tunisia; and exploration studies in the Jurassic and Cretaceous of the U.S. Gulf Coast, including Jurassic Smackover, Haynesville and Cretaceous James Lime, Edwards, Glen Rose, Austin Chalk, Buda and Eagleford Limestones, Devonian/Mississippian of W. Canada, Permian Wolfcampian of west Texas, Permian in Thailand, Pennsylvanian of Four Corners region, and Mesozoic of western and northern Africa.
Typical classroom view showing participants with notebook and rock sets, as they work an exercise following a lecture.
Participants work in groups of two, fostering discussion and sharing experiences. The labs reinforce the formal lectures. This format is more enjoyable and enhances learning.
Lectures are reinforced with exercises that use rock samples of cores and outcrops, augmented by thin sections for each sample. Thin section photographs are organized into a 154-page rock catalog photo book. Each person uses and keeps the paper copy of the photo book of hand sample & thin section photographs (valuable reference later on!).
Slab of Rock Set Sample 42 (Jurassic)
Thin Section Photomicrograph of Sample 42 (Oolitic Grainstone With Blue Secondary Micromoldic Ø)
Demonstration samples from all over the world, ranging in age from Holocene to Cambrian, are used to illustrate typical examples of carbonate skeletal and non-skeletal grains, textures and sedimentary structures, porosity types, and evaporites.
Participants examine these samples before tackling some of the formal exercises. Samples available only for U.S. seminars.
Much of the fourth day of the seminar is devoted to a core description exercise that utilizes a suite of cores from a lower Cretaceous reefal and oolitic sequence in S. Texas. Participants discern depositional facies, cycles of sedimentation, and reservoir quality, and relate each to log response. They present their results to the group. Each group discusses the plays evident in their core and evaluates the bigger-scale controls for each.