IN COLLABORATION WITH RAMÓN LÓPEZ JIMÉNEZ, PH.D
Schedule for 2022:
- By arrangement
Price:
- Professional: Five-day $4000; Three-day $2400
- Student: Five-day $2000: Three-day $1200
Contact for group and hardship rates
(includes tuition, guidebook, hotel, lunches, and field transportation)
Who Should Attend:
This course is designed for exploration and production geologists, stratigraphers, reservoir engineers, geophysicists, and petrophysicists who have a basic understanding of depositional systems, stratigraphic principles, and structural relationships but desire a stronger working knowledge of salt tectonics and its influence on both pre-existing sedimentary successions and contemporaneous depositional patterns through a hands-on field experience. This course is particularly useful to those who interpret seismic sections of sedimentary sequences that involve salt migration. It provides the opportunity to see and touch “seismic reflectors” associated with salt margins and to observe how these surfaces change as they extend away from a large diapir and enter adjacent rock units.
Course Description:
The El Gordo diapir, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, is one of the best exposed ancient salt diapir and associated halokinetic sedimentary sequences anywhere in the world, providing an excellent case study that can be applied directly to the interpretation of subsurface petroleum systems that have been influenced by salt deposition and tectonics, such as those of the U.S. Gulf coast, offshore Brazil and Africa, the North Sea, Persian Gulf, and elsewhere. We will traverse a large diapir and its lateral extensions to observe and understand internal salt facies (halofacies) for each zone of the system, from the anhydrite diapir core through flange extensions and into the complex relationship between salt and enclosing sedimentary rock bodies.
Much of the course includes newly discovered features from recent mapping, as presented at the 2019 international meeting on salt tectonics and petroleum systems sponsored by the Geological Society of London. Of particular interest is a thrust fault that is key to reconstructing evolution of the diapir and deposition of concurrent and subsequent sedimentary sequences. We will discuss the interplay between thrust propagation, growth of the diapir, creation of relief on the sea floor, and impacts on the deposition of overlying sedimentary units that range in age from Cretaceous to Paleogene, as well as relationships to surrounding older sedimentary successions that are in contact with the diapir wall. We will observe sedimentary sequences that were replaced by lateral salt intrusion and others that show no evidence of syndepositional halokinesis. We will visit exposures of halokinetic sequences that show a transition from depositional to mixed erosional/depositional architectures in shallow-marine to fluvial environments. Additionally, we will see many sedimentary features, such as gradual bed pinch-outs, channel-fills, physical sedimentary structures, and an abundance ofichnofacies.
The course runs five days, with a format consisting of early morning instructional sessions at the hotel, followed by further instruction and completion of exercises in the field.
Course Content and Objectives:
- Recognize structural, sedimentologic, and stratigraphic features associated with passive, active, and reactive diapirism at scales ranging from hundreds of meters (seismic) to centimeters (core)
- Identify salt facies from the diaper core into adjacent bedrock as they form features such as canopies and flanges
- Observe in the field aspects of sequence stratigraphy, such as bounding surfaces, systems tracts, stacking patterns, and space production and filling relationships
- Identify facies and facies associations for fluvial, shallow marine, reef, carbonate ramp, and deep-water depositional systems and conduct sedimentary architectural analyses
- Observe reservoir connectivity and heterogeneity as related to sedimentary architecture
- Demonstrate importance of outcrop analogs for subsurface interpretations
- Discuss auto- vs. allogenic depositional controls (base level, eustasy, tectonics, diapirism, compaction, climate) on sequence development
- Hike through a series of “stacked” parasequences to illustrate the repetitive character of facies associations and discuss their relationship to space production
- Measure and correlate multiple sections within a single parasequence to illustrate the concept of a systems tract
- Follow individual parasequences along depositional dip to demonstrate lateral facies changes from both fluvial to marine and reef or platform to deep-water systems
- Produce an outcrop facies map (architectural analysis) of a full depositional sequence
- Use multiple-working hypotheses to demonstrate the possibility of more than one reasonable interpretation for the same stratigraphic succession
Schedule:
- Day 1: Introduction to regional tectonics and stratigraphy, general principles and concepts of salt tectonics, a trek across the El Gordo diapir to observe salt facies, limestone stratigraphic sequences, and igneous intrusions into the diapir
- Day 2: General principles of halokinetic sequences, a hike across a halokinetic sequence from the diapir margin into adjacent contemporaneously-deposited strata from Late Cretaceous to Paleogene in age
- Day 3: Sequence stratigraphy and reservoir properties (systems tracts, parasequences, stacking patterns, facies associations, connectivity, net-to-gross), traverse the Huevo de Toro halokinetic sequence from the salt margin basinward into amalgamated sandstone deposits
- Day 4: Review of the stratigraphic analyses done the previous day, trek along the Camaron halokinetic sequence from the salt margin basinward into amalgamated sandstone deposits
- Day 5: Observation of sedimentary sequences replaced by salt intrusion and visits to shallow marine channel-fill deposits A drone will be flown at least one of the five days. The flight will include a group photo and video shooting. We will view fossil collections and North American Indian tools in Carricitos.
A drone will be flown at least one of the four days. The flight will include a group photo and video shooting.
