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Petrophysics and Well Logs

Explorer Emphasis Article

Basic. Humble. Old school. Whatever you call them, petrophysical well logs are a workhorse for the oil and gas industry. Today, geoscientists are using machine learning and other artificial intelligence techniques to glean even more information from logs. And a new generation of downhole instruments now provide loggers with more, and more relevant, data

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

A seismic acquisition project that would have taken years not too long ago can now be accomplished in months, thanks to “selective hearing” and other recent advances.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Talk to geophysicists about innovation and common themes emerge: Increased computing power. Artificial intelligence for data analytics. Full waveform inversion. Enhanced acoustic sensing, with multiple sensors. And much, much more. Innovations also can be seen in established geophysical tools. And some geophysical technologies and techniques that have been developing for five years or more are finally reaching day-to-day application in the field.

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American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Over the last several years, the industry’s downturn has spurred the development of more efficient ways to interpret both new and old seismic data, allowing operators to continue to explore and discover with reduced staff. The availability of cloud technology, super-computing resources and the application of machine learning techniques, such as use of neural networks in artificial intelligence, are transforming the ability to interpret seismic data and create evergreen Earth models – supporting the undeniable adage that necessity, indeed, is the mother of invention.

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American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Learn! Blog

Identifying optimal well spacing is one of the key challenges facing unconventional reservoirs. Welcome to an interview with Mouin Almasoodi, Devon Energy, who will be participating and giving a presentation in AAPG’s Success with Difficult Unconventionals workshop, Nov 12-13, in Houston.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Learn! Blog

Finding ways to improve the ultimate recovery of reservoirs and to do so in a way that has a low environmental impact, protects water resources, and improves the economics of the field has been the main focus of Locus Bio-Energy (https://locusbioenergy.com/). Welcome to an interview with Jon Rogers, who talks to us about his experiences.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Middle East Blog

The AAPG Easten Mediterranean Mega-Basin: New Data, New Ideas and New Opportunities GTW took place on 6 – 7 September 2019 at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Alexandria, Egypt. We received 77 attendees from 36 different companies and 13 different countries.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Search and Discovery Article

A collection of more than 50 abstracts for papers concerning 3D structural Geologic Interpretation. Abstracts of papers presented at the AAPG Hedberg Conference in Reno, NV in June, 2013.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Search and Discovery Article

A collection of 30 abstracts concerning the mean and methods for a better understanding of fundamental parameters associated with successful hydraulic fracturing. From an AAPG Hedberg convention held in Lakeway, Texas in December, 2014

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Division Column DEG

If there was one personal lesson that I learned while moving from conventional oil and gas exploration efforts to broach the realm of unconventional resources more than 15 years ago, it is that many, if not all paradigms were bound to be broken. This sometimes came with a degree of trepidation. The less obvious answers were often tied to challenging previously accepted principles in the hope that another conundrum could be solved. The repeated increases in estimated global and domestic ultimate recoverable reserves attest to the fact that we did not know what we thought we knew. Likewise, there is still much that we have yet to figure out.

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American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Workshop
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tuesday, 18 February Wednesday, 19 February 2025, 7:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.

Join us for AAPG Orphan, Abandoned, Idle and Marginal Wells Conference 2025. This workshop will focus on orphan, abandoned, idle, and marginal wells and the business opportunities and technology associated with plugging and repurposing wells, reducing methane emissions, protecting water supplies, and extending the lives of marginal wells.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Field Seminar
Houston, Texas
Saturday, 1 February 2025, 8:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m.

Everyone in Houston lives within a few miles of a bayou. Some people think of them as permanent, but the bayous are constantly changing, especially during high water events like Hurricane Harvey. This trip is a 2.5 mile walk down a section of Buffalo Bayou where we will look at the archives of past storms and discuss what to do for future storms.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

Climate change is not only happening in the atmosphere but also in the anthroposphere; in some ways the former could drive or exacerbate the latter, with extreme weather excursions and extreme excursions from societal norms occurring all over the earth. Accomplishing geoscience for a common goal – whether that is for successful business activities, resource assessment for public planning, mitigating the impacts of geological hazards, or for the sheer love of furthering knowledge and understanding – can and should be done by a workforce that is equitably developed and supported. Difficulty arises when the value of institutional programs to increase equity and diversity is not realized.

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Request a visit from Sherilyn Williams-Stroud!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

For well over a century there have been conflicting indications of the strength of the crust and of faults and what controls them.  Much of our ignorance comes quite naturally from the general inaccessibility of the crust to measurement--in contrast with our understanding of the atmosphere, which is much more accessible to observation as well as more rapidly changing.  Crustal strength is best understood in deforming sedimentary basins where the petroleum industry has made great contributions, particularly in deforming petroleum basins because of the practical need to predict. In this talk we take a broad look at key issues in crustal strength and deformation and what we can learn from boreholes, earthquakes, active fault systems, and toy models.

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Request a visit from John Suppe!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

While there are many habitats that are associated with the deposition of organic-rich marine and lacustrine source rocks, one important pathway is linked to the onset of increased basin subsidence associated with major tectonic events. A key aspect is that this subsidence is spatially variable, with the uplift of basin flanks contemporaneous with the foundering of the basin center, resulting in a steeper basin profile.

Request a visit from Kurt W. Rudolph!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

Subsurface risk and uncertainty are recognized as very important considerations in petroleum geoscience. And even when volume estimates are relatively accurate, the reservoir characteristics that determine well placement and performance can remain highly uncertain. In analyzing results and work practices, three aspects of uncertainty are reviewed here.

Request a visit from Kurt W. Rudolph!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

Around 170 million years ago, the Gulf of Mexico basin flooded catastrophically, and the pre-existing landscape, which had been a very rugged, arid, semi-desert world, was drowned beneath an inland sea of salt water. The drowned landscape was then buried under kilometers of salt, perfectly preserving the older topography. Now, with high-quality 3D seismic data, the salt appears as a transparent layer, and the details of the drowned world can be seen in exquisite detail, providing a unique snapshot of the world on the eve of the flooding event. We can map out hills and valleys, and a system of river gullies and a large, meandering river system. These rivers in turn fed into a deep central lake, whose surface was about 750m below global sea level. This new knowledge also reveals how the Louann Salt was deposited. In contrast to published models, the salt was deposited in a deep water, hypersaline sea. We can estimate the rate of deposition, and it was very fast; we believe that the entire thickness of several kilometers of salt was laid down in a few tens of thousands of years, making it possibly the fastest sustained deposition seen so far in the geological record.

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Request a visit from Frank Peel!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

Physics is an essential component of geophysics but there is much that physics cannot know or address. 

Request a visit from John Castagna!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
VG Abstract

The carbonate sequences that were deposited in the now exhumed Tethyan Ocean influence many aspects of our lives today, either by supplying the energy that warms our homes and the fuel that powers our cars or providing the stunning landscapes for both winter and summer vacations. They also represent some of the most intensely studied rock formations in the world and have provided geoscientists with a fascinating insight into the turbulent nature of 250 Million years of Earth’s history. By combining studies from the full range of geoscience disciplines this presentation will trace the development of these carbonate sequences from their initial formation on the margins of large ancient continental masses to their present day locations in and around the Greater Mediterranean and Near East region. The first order control on growth patterns and carbonate platform development by the regional plate-tectonic setting, underlying basin architecture and fluctuations in sea level will be illustrated. The organisms that contribute to sequence development will be revealed to be treasure troves of forensic information. Finally, these rock sequences will be shown to contain all the ingredients necessary to form and retain hydrocarbons and the manner in which major post-depositional tectonic events led to the formation of some of the largest hydrocarbon accumulations in the world will be demonstrated.

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Request a visit from Keith Gerdes!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

President Biden has laid out a bold and ambitious goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions in the United States by 2050.  The pathway to that target includes cutting total greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and eliminating them entirely from the nation’s electricity sector by 2035. The Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management will play an important role in the transition to net-zero carbon emissions by reducing the environmental impacts of fossil energy production and use – and helping decarbonize other hard-to abate sectors.

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Request a visit from Jennifer Wilcox!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
DL Abstract

Engineering of wind farms, development of carbon sequestration projects in shelfal waters, the proliferation of communication cables that connect the world, all of these things suggest that it is time to re-examine what we know about shelf processes both updip-to-downdip and along shoreline, and the influence of shelf processes on erosion and transport of sediments.

Request a visit from Lesli Wood!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
VG Abstract

In comparison with the known boundary conditions that promote salt deformation and flow in sedimentary basins, the processes involved with the mobilization of clay-rich detrital sediments are far less well established. This talk will use seismic examples in different tectonic settings to document the variety of shale geometries that can be formed under brittle and ductile deformations.

Request a visit from Juan I. Soto!

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)

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