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As the world continues to adapt to the restrictions imposed by the Coronavirus lockdown, training companies are having to investigate new ways to educate and engage clients. The lessons GeoLogica learn may provide new insight into how our business emerges in the post-Corona landscape.

For some years now portions of education, training and learning have been moving into the online realm, most notably through self-paced methods, including reading, pre-recorded lectures and quizzes, and these have proved useful for some fundamental topics. While we feel there is nothing better than direct interaction with an experienced instructor, in a world where direct interaction is off the table, we want to access the next best alternative.

We see a solution in remote delivery where the online teaching is live in real-time and combined with periods of self-paced learning through reading and quizzes. A key challenge will be to establish the optimal length for each element. Traditional lectures and meetings generally last no longer than an hour or so, in order for peoples’ attention to remain focussed – any shorter and the topic may not be sufficiently developed, any longer and concentration can wander. Online attention spans are thought to be considerably shorter – the ideal length of time for a talk or lecture may be only 30 minutes before breaking for a quiz, exercise or Q and A session. Live sessions could perhaps last 60–90 minutes if there are plenty of breaks and thought is given to issues associated with staring at screens for prolonged periods of time. Materials for self-paced learning also need to be thought-out – they should be well-structured and broken into smaller sections to tie-in with the live learning and ensure not too much is crammed into the time between lectures.

A key consideration for us is working with each instructor to find the model that works best for him or her. Some will prefer numerous short and punchy lectures, while others will opt for longer sessions that allow for more in-depth treatment of a topic. Some will rely heavily on interactive exercises and others on demonstrations. In every case, we want a solution that allows for live visual and audible feedback from course participants to maintain class momentum and enthusiasm.

Taking all these factors into account, GeoLogica is pleased to announce that we can offer online training as an in-house option for most of the courses in our portfolio. Topics range from Fundamental to Advanced courses in Basin Analysis, Resource Plays, Structural Geology, Geophysics, Evaluation Methods, Geophysics, Reservoir Characterization, Depositional Systems and Reservoir Engineering. Most of our courses can be tailored to fit an individual company’s needs and the delivery method can also be modified to suit. You can download a list of our latest online course offerings here or contact us with your requirements.

All of us at GeoLogica believe the most effective teaching is face-to-face – yes, it is more expensive but, in the end, people learn best through direct, human interaction and experience. Attending a classroom course with your peers and colleagues also provides an unquantifiable stimulus of human interaction, which helps develop a deeper understanding of the topic. And in the field, the full sensory immersion of observing outcrops provides an unbeatable learning environment. Nevertheless, there is a space for online leaning, so long as it is designed to be efficient, effective and engaging. Advantages can include reduced need for travel, less time away from the office for participants and cost savings. And, in these challenging times, social distancing.

‘Experiential’ learning, whether face-to-face or online, is thought to be fundamental to human understanding of the world around us. It is unlikely that online methods will completely replace traditional teaching methods but perhaps there is an optimum combination of online and face-to-face methods. Time will tell.

Mark Rowan discusses evaporite deposition in the Gulf of Mexico and how new ideas on its timing have important implications for both pre- and suprasalt exploration.

The Gulf of Mexico (GoM), despite being one of the most studied salt basins in the world, remains an enigma in terms of the timing and paleogeography of evaporite deposition. But new data and ideas are changing how we think about the deep framework of this prolific basin.

The salt has traditionally been considered to be Callovian (upper Middle Jurassic), but with effectively no supporting data due to suprasalt strata with no age control and a lack of presalt penetrations. Recently, though, Sr isotopes have yielded ages ranging over roughly 5 my from the Bajocian to the Callovian. Well data from the southern GoM onshore and shelf show that the cessation of evaporite deposition was gradational, with interbedded carbonates and anhydrite that continued into the Oxfordian and Kimmeridgian in a hypersaline sabkha environment with up to 3X normal ocean salinity. In coeval salt basins from onshore Mexico, Sr and biostratigraphic data indicate ongoing evaporite and minor carbonate deposition from the Bajocian through the Kimmeridgian.

Other traditional views are that the salt was deposited near sea level and that the salt was almost pure halite. But these are being challenged by new ideas triggered in large part by the much improved imaging provided by modern seismic data. More researchers are coming around to a model in which the salt basin had considerable relief, ranging from close to sea level in proximal areas to 2 km or more in the basin center. However, whether the basin was filled mostly with brine or mostly with air is still a matter of debate. Moreover, the salt appears to be a typical layered evaporite sequence with at least locally significant proportions of non-halite lithologies. This can be seen in folded intrasalt layers within the cores of deep anticlines in the NW and SW GoM and in the “Sakarn” series in the NE GoM (with an equivalent offshore Yucatán), a deformed layered sequence coeval with at least part of the Louann/Campeche salt.

These new ideas have critical implications for subjects ranging from both pre- and suprasalt exploration, to plate tectonics and Jurassic paleogeography. They, along with the fundamentals and styles/processes of salt tectonics, will be addressed in Salt Tectonics of the Gulf of Mexico, the GeoLogica course running in Houston from 13–14 August, 2024.

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak is causing considerable uncertainty regarding people’s travel plans and schedules. and GeoLogica is actively monitoring the situation and reviewing up-to-date advice from the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The current and dynamic world-wide Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak is causing considerable uncertainty regarding people’s travel plans and schedules. GeoLogica is actively monitoring the situation and reviewing up-to-date advice from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and relevant government advisory websites (some of these are listed below). The reality is that in the United States and most of Western Europe the risk of infection is low outside of local hotspots but this may change rapidly and we are watching the situation daily.

At present we are considering our program of training courses with an emphasis on those classes that are 1) due to run within the next quarter (up to June) and 2) those that require participants to travel – i.e. field courses. Depending on the locations and amount of travel involved, we will be working proactively with our tutors and clients to schedule courses to ensure no unnecessary risks are taken. We anticipate further developments in the next week and will provide updates as required.

Some useful sites:

www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/travel-advice

www.worldaware.com/resources/intelligence-alerts/sars-cov-2-and-covid-19-coronavirus-intelligence-hub

US Sites:

travelmaps.state.gov/TSGMap/

www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html

travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/ea/novel-coronavirus-hubei-province–china.html

UK sites:

www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/usa/health

www.gov.uk/government/news/novel-coronavirus-and-avian-flu-advice-for-travel-to-china

Paul Wright shares his insights on the pre-salt “Microbialite” reservoirs of the South Atlantic.

The Cretaceous Aptian Barra Velha Formation of the Santos Basin (offshore Brazil), often referred to as “Microbialite” reservoirs, has hosted over 30 discoveries, with recoverable reserves estimated as > 60 BBOE. This limestone unit, up to 550m thick, with equivalents in other offshore South Atlantic basins, is now considered perhaps the largest chemogenic (chemically formed, not microbial) carbonate deposystem in Earth history, covering at least a third of a million square kilometers. Besides having no modern or ancient analogues, much of the porosity is the result of the dissolution of magnesium clays.

Two opposing views are held as to where these carbonates formed.

One view, based on sedimentological and geochemical evidence, has interpreted the reservoirs as having been deposited in hyper-alkaline shallow evaporitic lakes, affected by some syn-depositional tectonism, but later significantly affected by post-depositional deformation immediately before, during and after salt deposition. This model interprets the local relief on the top of the reservoir of often 1km or more, as structural in origin, with age-equivalent carbonates in down-thrown areas as being of the same facies.

The other model interprets the relief as reflecting the formation of the reservoir carbonates as isolated carbonate build-ups separated by deep lake deposits likely lacking reservoir-prone facies.

A consequence of this second model is that platforms are regarded as areally differentiated with various companies populating reservoir models with different facies assemblages. In contrast, in the shallow lake model, individual facies are envisaged as being laterally very extensive and layer cake. The crux of the controversy seems to be to what extent seismic geometries should be interpreted as expressions of sedimentological features, versus where a detailed structural analysis, linked closely to detailed sedimentological and geochemical analyses, has been carried out. The implications for exploration and reservoir development are enormous.

Discussion of this topic will feature prominently in the GeoLogica field course – Modern and Ancient Carbonate Lakes of the Western U.S.: Lessons for Interpreting the Cretaceous Pre-Salt Reservoirs in the South Atlantic (G030) 02 – 05 November, 2020. Paul’s other upcoming GeoLogica courses include: De-risking Carbonate Exploration (G008) Houston, 15 – 18 June, 2020, and Fundamentals of Carbonate Depositional and Diagenetic Systems Field Seminar: Lessons from the Permian Basin (G007) 8 – 13 November, 2020 (co-led with Kate Giles).

Paul’s recent work has included various publications and workshops relating to the pre-salt of the South Atlantic as well as the investigation of facies stacking in Cretaceous hydrocarbon-bearing intra-platformal basins.

Recently published articles include a study of reservoir architecture in the super giant Karachaganak field in Kazakhstan (with Simon Beavington-Penney, Stuart Kennedy and Mark Covil): 2019 Integration of static and dynamic data and high-resolution sequence stratigraphy to define reservoir architecture and flow units within a ‘super giant’ gas condensate and oil field, Kazakhstan. Marine and Petroleum Geology 101 (2019) 486–501. doi.org/10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2018.11.005

Paul was also invited to write an article for GeoExpro (September 2019, 28–31) on the controversy over the seismic models used to interpret the pre-salt carbonates offshore Brazil.

In conjunction with Andrew Barnett of Shell, Paul has provided a practical methodology for characterizing the unusual textures found in the pre-salt Barra Velha “Microbialite” reservoirs of offshore Brazil (Facies, 2020 released December 2019). doi.org/10.1007/s10347-019-0591-2

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