New Knowledge Makes
Deep-Water Elephant Hunting a Viable Reality: Interview with Dr.
Jon Rotzien, Basin Dynamics
Deep-water reservoirs are more important than ever as we gain more
understanding of how complex systems have resulted in prolific
reservoirs that possess often surprising volumes of oil and gas that
are very long-lived, due in part to the existence of compartments
often with high permeability and porosity.
Welcome to an interview with Dr. Jon Rotzien, Founder &
President of Basin Dynamics in Houston, TX. Dr. Rotzien is
teaching his highly-acclaimed power-course in Deep-Water Systems /
Siliciclastics at OTC on Saturday, April 29.
http://tinyurl.com/aapg-rotzien
Here's the link to register --
https://registration.experientevent.com/ShowOTC171/?
Click on "Register Now" -- you can register for "Training Course
Only"
(Frustrated? please email Susan Nash at snash@aapg.org for a
paper form -- and to request a discount.)
Susan’s Note: Deep-water reservoirs are elephants in our
industry, and now, thanks to new technology and analytics, the
elephants are hiding in plain sight, just waiting for your team to
find them and to welcome them home. )
1) Hello, Dr. Rotzien. Tell us a little about yourself and your
connection to the oil and gas industry.
Like many of us in AAPG attending OTC, everything I do is about the
rocks and the petroleum they hold. I've enjoyed working as a
petroleum geoscientist after completing an industry-sponsored PhD
program. Houston is home. It's been a joy to be part of the industry
community here. I started Basin Dynamics just over a year ago. My
focus is developing consulting relationships and professional
training courses in oil and gas industry centers. My field courses
to major deep-water outcrop belts in California, Ireland, France,
and New Zealand utilize modern and proprietary research. Recently,
my deep-water petroleum reservoir training courses have been in
North America. Later in 2017, Basin Dynamics will be conducting
courses in Europe and Asia. Basin Dynamics courses focus on all
scales of deep-water reservoirs, from pore-scale to seismic-scale,
and from new ventures to development. I'm delighted and honored to
teach my 1-day short course in Houston for OTC. It's inspiring to
have thousands of industry professionals from all around the world
come together in Houston. It's one of my favorite times of the year.
2) Why are deep-water siliciclastic petroleum reservoirs
important to understand in today's E&P environment?
It's important to characterize petroleum reservoirs to make informed
business decisions at every stage in the value chain. Typical
challenges in frontier basins involve understanding the presence and
quality of reservoir. In appraisal and development, companies want
to quantify the uncertainty in reservoir connectivity and the
likelihoods of bed lengths, shale drape, and lateral variation in
depositional environment and reservoir quality. These data are used
for static and dynamic reservoir modeling. The science of deep-water
reservoirs is so closely tied to the economics of the project.
3) What are the most important aspects of deep-water depositional
systems, from an industry perspective? Why do we focus our
attention on deep-water systems?
When oil price is relatively low, it's essential to understand the
risks and associated uncertainties pertaining to reservoir presence,
reservoir quality, and seal presence. These are three of the main
risks in any conventional drilling program. With a clear
understanding of these risks, exploration success will increase. If
all of the risks work, then it's onto appraisal in most cases. Basin
Dynamics expertise is the half of the risk formula primarily dealing
with the reservoir and seal. But there is the other half of the risk
process that demands skills in petroleum systems and structural
geology. It's always good to keep your structural and petroleum
systems friends close! Exploration requires teamwork.
As an industry, the focus is on deep-water reservoirs because they
comprise many fields around the world today. When the economics of
onshore and offshore field development are compared, often they are
not so different. Another important point is that deep-water
reservoirs also occur on modern day continents. Some of the
formations in the Delaware and Midland basins were originally
deposited well below wave base and consist of hemipelagic drapes,
turbidites, debrites, and transitional flow deposits. These form
similar types of petroleum reservoirs observed well below mudline in
bathyal settings today in the Gulf of Mexico.
4) What aspects of deep-water reservoirs are sometimes
overlooked? How can we better understand compartmentalization?
Consider these factors. The scale, range of variability, and
heterogeneity in deep-water depositional systems and their petroleum
reservoirs need to be evaluated. Oftentimes companies are interested
in what is a reasonable interpretation of a submarine fan's
net:gross, size, and internal architecture. In the
not-so-distant past, submarine fan models were quite simple, and yet
they represented novel research into deep-water environments. Today,
our understanding of deep-water processes and their effects on
sediment transport and deposition has advanced, yet we as a
scientific and industry community have directly observed just a
handful of deep-water sediment gravity events. To put that in
perspective, we could go out right now and study thousands of
fluvial systems. Those datasets just aren't publicly available for
deep-water systems yet.
There are a number of modern methods being applied to petroleum
reservoirs to understand compartmentalization and inform well
planning decisions. Some of those include major, trace and REE
geochemical techniques, detrital zircon U-Pb ages, new seismic
processing methods and attribute analysis, as well as outcrop
analogue datasets.
5) Building on the topic of compartmentalization, what makes
deep-water reservoirs highly connected? How is the geology
connected to the economics of the play?
That's a great question. I've heard the saying, "All models are
wrong, some are useful." There are models of deep-water environments
ranging from submarine valleys, to aprons, and even stepped, perched
and ponded depositional systems on continental slopes. Each of these
models carries implications for reservoir connectivity, yet it is
important to understand a dataset from a first principles
perspective. What is the shape of the basin, and how was it formed?
How energetic were the flows? What is the grain size, and the
fractions of clay and silt? What are the lithofacies and higher
orders of architecture? In this way, a predictive model can be built
that does not solely rely on rote application of generalized models
from other systems that may be useful as analogues, but may not
provide the answer to a unique depositional system and play fairway.
6) Where are some of the most exciting plays today? And in the
future?
If we knew that, Dr. Nash, we'd start our own E&P company!
Perhaps the most exciting turbidite plays are happening in western
Texas, Alaska, northern and southern portions of the Atlantic, SE
Asia, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean. There are lots of opportunities
to get involved if you have passion, persistence, and dedication.
Earth still holds secrets, and we just have to continue to search
for them.
In my most recent course at AAPG ACE, we had participants from over
a dozen countries. These professionals have worked all over the
world. They bring with them diverse experiences from many different
types of petroleum basins and deep-water reservoirs. Collaborative
course exercises enrich and enhance the course experience as well as
promote the discovery of more of Earth's secrets.
For more information, please visit my website at www.basindynamics.com.
Jon Rotzien, Ph.D
Basin Dynamics