IN COLLABORATION WITH: RAMÓN LÓPEZ JIMÉNEZ, PH.D. & HASAN ÇELIK, PH.D.
Schedule for 2022:
- By request
LGC Maras Basin 2020 Informational Flyer
Price:
- Professional: $4000
- Student: $2000
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 deep-water sedimentology through a hands-on field experience. All participants will learn to apply sedimentary architectural analysis of deep-water deposits to the prediction of key reservoir characteristics, such as connectivity and net-to-gross ratios in three-dimensions. Those working on exploration of basins in the eastern Mediterranean Sea will benefit from an understanding of the sediment routing systems that fed those basins. .
Course Description:
The Maras Basin, Kahramanmaras Province, Turkey holds some of the best exposed sequences of channel-fill and mass-transport deposits (MTDs) anywhere in the world. The high-quality of exposures provides insights on reservoir properties that can be applied to a wide range of channel-fill architectures and sequences of mass transport deposits. The understanding of these deposits can be applied directly to the interpretation of complex subsurface petroleum systems that have evolved in submarine contractional tectonic settings, like the gravitational and basement-driven fold-and-thrust belts of offshore Gulf of Mexico, Borneo, Atlantic coast of Colombia, eastern Mediterranean Sea, and Mozambique.
We will traverse more than 20 km from north to south to observe and understand the sedimentary architecture of four independent channel-to-slope complexes in the stratigraphic sequences of the basin. These represent submarine channel systems that existed during the Serravallian (Miocene) and were controlled by the propagation of fold-and-thrust belts in a collisional tectonic setting. These channel-to-slope complexes show variable sedimentary architectures for channels that developed in a variety of settings, including interreef, forereef, relatively high-gradient slopes, relatively low-gradient slopes, and overlying mass transport deposits.
We will gather data in the field in the form of sedimentary architectural descriptions from key outcrops. Then we will discuss their application to the interpretation of industry seismic and well data, with the aim of predicting reservoir properties of analog petroleum plays. We will discuss the importance of understanding the rate, orientation, and geometry of propagating thrusts in the location, size, and distribution of facies from channel fills and associated overbank deposits. We will observe a range of MTDs and discus potential relationships between facies associations and aerial extent. We will address deductive reasoning approaches for up- and downdip reservoir predictive interpretation of sediment transport processes.
Course Content and Objectives:
- Recognize sedimentologic and stratigraphic features associated with deep-water channel fills , overbank deposits, and MTDs at scales ranging from hundreds of meters (seismic) to centimeters (core)
- Identify channel-fill facies from a range of shelf and slope settings
- Observe aspects of sequence stratigraphy in the field, such as bounding surfaces, systems tracts, stacking patterns, and space production and filling relationships
- Observe aspects of the sedimentary architecture of channel fills that unequivocally point to the syndepositional propagation of a thrust system
- Identify facies and facies associations and conduct sedimentary architectural analyses for deep-water channel-fill and mass-transport deposits
- Observe reservoir connectivity and heterogeneity as related to sedimentary architecture and sequence stratigraphy
- Demonstrate the importance of outcrop analogs for subsurface interpretations
- Discuss auto- vs. allogenic depositional controls (base level, eustasy, tectonics, compaction, climate) on sequence development
- Hike through a series of channel-fill deposits to illustrate both the repetitive character of facies associations and variations in those patterns as related to space production and filling
- Measure and correlate multiple sections within a single channel fill succession to demonstrate updip to downdip changes in facies and facies architecture
- 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 of southern Turkey. General principles of sequence stratigraphy in deep-water basins. Overlook of the Maras Basin from Ahir Mountain, description of basin stratigraphy and location of stops for the following days. Introduction to sedimentary architectural analysis by visiting several outcrops.
- Day 2: General principles and concepts of deep-water sedimentology and marine compressional tectonics. During the first half of the day, we will visit a submarine canyon fill overlain by a reefal carbonate platform and observe channel fills in forereef and interreefzones. The second half of the day we’ll see kilometer-scale semi-confined channel fills that have a sandstone sheet architecture.
- Day 3: General principles of sediment transport processes and resultant deposits in deep-water settings. Visit to outcrops with successions of mass transport deposits and channel fills in forelimbs of ancient fault propagation folds.
- Day 4: Review of current sedimentary architectural models of for channel-fill deposits. Visit two canyon-fill systems whose sedimentary architectures show evidence of control by thrust propagation folding.
A drone will be flown at least one of the four days. The flight will include a group photo and video shooting.
