Friday Evening Technical Session
“Sequence Stratigraphic Controls on Fluvial Sand Body Geometries: Insights from the Triassic Dockum Group, OR…How Did Those Little Channels Make Such Big Sheets of Sand?”–Lee F. Krystinik, Fossil Creek Resources, Arlington, TX
This talk focuses on observations within Palo Duro Canyon, as well as a few townships to the south of the Park. The Triassic Dockum formation provides an outstanding outcrop laboratory for studying well-exposed relationships between individual fluvial-channel sand bodies, channel complexes and their equivalent fine-grained fluvial, lacustrine and paleosol deposits. The Dockum is part of a much larger complex of Triassic streams and lakes draining a large portion of the mid and western North American continental areas into the paleo-Pacific. Climatic rise and fall of paleo lake levels and local to regional syn-sedimentary tectonics (small to moderate faulting) controlled sedimentation and preservation of reservoir-scale sandstone bodies in the Dockum.
Because of rapid cyclicity of Dockum paleo-lake levels, multiple cycles of inundation and exposure can be documented in most exposures. Some of these exposure surfaces can be traced laterally to large incised valleys which contain nested channel complexes. When sediment supply was relatively high and accomodation was relatively low, these channels would fill with their sandy sediment burden and avulse to new locations within the broader channel complex. Multiple repetitions of this cut and fill cycle produced sheet-like deposits of fluvial sandstone up to a township wide and perhaps wider in some intervals.
“The Uncoventional Black Swan Event.”—Ted Beaumont, SM Energy Company, Tulsa, OK
The unconventional resource play could be called a Black Swan event. In 2007, Nassim Taleb published “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.” He coined the term “Black Swan Event” for surprising, high-impact, hard-to-predict events.
Why is the unconventional resource play a Black Swan Event? First, it is surprising. Who saw it coming? Second, the unconventional resource play has been high impact. The US is producing more gas than ever and the price dropped from more than $10 per MCF to less than $2 per MCF. Just a few years ago the United States imported 65% of the oil it consumed. Mainly as a result of the Bakken and Eagle Ford oil resource plays, today the United States imports 45% and some predict that will fall to 25% by 2020.
The unconventional resource play raises a lot of questions. For example, will there be a market for conventional plays in the future? When will oil and gas from unconventional plays reach its peak? Will resource plays be economic outside North America?
Friday Afternoon Poster Session
A New Method for Determining Volume of Clay (Vcl), Effective Porosity (?e), and Effective Water Saturation (Swe) in a Gas-Bearing Arkosic (“granite wash”) Sandstone—George B. Asquith, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX
Delineating the Subsurface From Space–Latest Generation Satellite Imagery As Your Field Geologist—R.N. Baker, D. Koger, Koger Remote Sensing, Ft. Worth, TX
Minerals of Palo Duro Canyon—Darryl Maddox, Amarillo, TX
Using S-XANES at the Advanced Photon Source Beamline 9-BM to Investigate Sulfur Content in Coals and Kerogens—Trudy B. Bolin, Advanced Photon Source, Argonne, IL
The Integration of Key Petrophysical and Geomechanical Play Drivers into Geologic Attribute Mapping: Getting Ahead of the Stampede—Larry Brooks and Randy Montalvo, NuTech Energy Alliance, Houston, TX
Resource Play “Examples” Utilizing Crown Geochemistry Mass Spec Mud Gas Logging and the Relationship with Vintage and Modern Electric Logs–Bud McIntyre, Stephanie Altenhofel, and Bruce Warren, Crown Geochemistry, Inc., Burns Flat, OK
West Texas and Eastern New Mexico Precambrian Basement Revealed—Melanie A. Barnes, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX
~~If you have a poster presentation that is pertinent to Mid-Continent geology and would like to present it at this field conference please use the form on the Contact page to provide the details and we will contact you.~~