FORT WORTH GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

September 14th, 2009 Mike Pinnell Utah Thrust Belt; 'We've Only Just Begun to Explore' October 12th, 2009 Kevin Corbett Eagleford Shale Exploration Models   November 9th, 2009 John Warme Devonian Carbonate Platform of Nevada: Facies, Surfaces, Cycles, Sequences, Reefs, and Cataclysmic Alamo Impact Breccia   December 14th, 2009 Scott Hamlin Ozona Sandstone In the Val Verde Basin   January 11th, 2010 Dan Tearpock Fort Worth Petroleum Club Quick Look Techniques (1 Day Seminar) Click Here for Announcement   February 8th, 2010 Josh Stark Factors Controlling Coalbed Methane Production from Helper, Drunkards Wash and Buzzard Bench Fields, Carbon and Emery Counties, Utah   TBA Ft. Worth Joint Societies Casino Night Click Here for Announcement   March 8th, 2010 Victor Carrillo Texas Energy Sector Update with Emphasis on Barnett Shale   April 12th, 2010 TBA TBA End of Year Members and Spouses Monday Lunch May 10th, 2010 Multiple Scholarship Recipient Presentations

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March, 2010

“Texas Energy Sector Update with Emphasis on Barnett Shale”

Victor Carrillo, Chairman Texas Railroad Commission

A native of Abilene, Texas, Victor Carrillo joined the Texas Railroad Commission in February 2003 when Governor Rick Perry appointed him to fill the unexpired term of Tony Garza who became U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. Carrillo currently serves as Chairman of the agency.   He was also Chairman of the Governor’s Texas Energy Planning Council that created a comprehensive energy plan for the State of Texas.

Chairman Carrillo also serves on a variety of boards such as:

·         Chairman of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Advisory Committee to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, advising the Secretary on all aspects of leasing, exploration, development and protection of OCS lands. 

·         Former Vice Chairman of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC) -- a national compact of oil and gas producing states whose mission is to promote the efficient recovery of domestic oil and natural gas resources while protecting health, safety and the environment. He is Governor Perry's official representative to the IOGCC.

·         America's Energy Coast (AEC) Honorary Leadership Council – comprised of leaders who educate the public about the necessity of sustainable energy production in a sound environmental landscape throughout the Gulf Coast region of the four energy-producing states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

·         Member, Committee on Gas, of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC).  NARUC is a national association representing the public utility commissioners who regulate essential utility services, such as electricity, gas, telecommunications, water, and transportation, throughout the country.

·         Board of Advisors of the Texas Journal of Oil, Gas & Energy Law at the University of Texas School of Law.

Much of Carrillo’s education and professional experience relate to oil and gas exploration and production. He has a B.S. degree in geology from Hardin-Simmons University and a M.S. degree in geology from Baylor University. In 1988, he joined Amoco Production Company in Houston as a petroleum geophysicist where he gained experience in the full spectrum of oil and gas exploration and production activities.

From 1990-1994, while working professionally for Amoco by day, Victor attended the University of Houston Law Center at night, earning his law degree in 1994 with an emphasis in environmental and oil and gas law. From 1994-96, Victor worked as an energy attorney at the General Land Office where he advised the land commissioner on oil and gas, environmental, and general government issues.

In 1996, Victor and his family returned to Abilene, his hometown, where he served as assistant city attorney and later taught political science and legal studies at Hardin-Simmons University, his alma mater. He ran for and won election to the Abilene City Council, where he served until he was appointed as Taylor County Judge. In November of 2002, he was elected to a four-year term as Taylor County Judge, the position he held when the governor appointed him to the Texas Railroad Commission.

The Abilene Young Lawyers’ Association honored Victor as the Young Lawyer of the Year in 2001. In 2003, Victor was awarded the first Young Alumni of the Year award from Hardin-Simmons University. In May 2006, Victor was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Hardin-Simmons University.

Chairman Carrillo is the son of a Mexican immigrant, the first in his family to have gone to college, and the highest-ranking elected Hispanic official in Texas. Hispanic Business Magazine has  named Carrillo to its list of the 100 Most Influential Hispanics in the United States.

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February, 2010

Factors Controlling Coalbed Methane Production 

from Helper, Drunkards Wash and Buzzard Bench Fields, 

Carbon and Emery Counties, Utah

Stark, T. Joshua ¹; Cook, C. W.^2
1 XTO Energy, Fort Worth, TX.
² XTO Energy, Houston, TX.

Helper, Drunkards Wash and Buzzard Bench Fields are portions of a continuous CBM reservoir within the Ferron Member of the Upper Cretaceous (Middle-Late Turonian) Mancos Shale. CBM production occurs within non-volumetric heterogeneous compartmentalized reservoirs. Gas content for high-volatile B bituminous coals is anomalously high, displaying an isotopically mixed character of biogenic and thermogenic signatures. Gas content is variable throughout the trend, exhibiting a general decrease to the updip, southeastern portion of the coal belt. Correlation is noted between gas content, EUR, and salinity of formation fluids. In portions of the trend, updip saline formation fluids grade downdip into fresh water.

An inclined potentiometric surface is developed between the deeper western area (Wasatch Plateau) and the shallower eastern region (San Rafael Uplift), resulting in minor artesian overpressuring in portions of the field. Fresh water and anaerobic bacteria enter the downdip portion of the coal belt via major Basin and Range collapse grabens that were emplaced about 15 mya. Subsurface fresh water inflow to the Ferron Member has been measured at 2.4 ft3/sec, with a C-14 date of 28,000-31,000 years. Reservoir heterogeneity and compartmentalization was created by varying structural styles, forming permeability conduits and baffles that channeled artesian fresh water flow through the Ferron coals. Areas of high EUR are characterized by high rates of fluid flow, high gas content, low salinity and an increase in the fraction of isotopically light biogenic methane. Poor permeability with low fluid flow, low gas content, high salinity and a dominance of thermogenic methane characterize areas of low EUR.

It is suggested that initial thermogenic gas content within the coal was reduced as a result of disequilibrium induced by uplift of the Colorado Plateau, which raised Ferron coals from a maximum burial depth of about 11,100 ft to as shallow as 1,000 ft. Facies equivalent Ferron marine sandstones crop out about six miles to the east of the subsurface coal belt. Spontaneous methane degasification resulted in undersaturated coals near this margin. Original formation fluid (Rw = .08) is retained in this updip region. Subsequent Basin and Range extension introduced fresh water and anaerobic bacteria into the system, re-saturating coals with isotopically light biogenic methane along avenues of enhanced permeability and within faulted compartments of the CBM trend.

 

T. Joshua Stark

 

Josh Stark holds a BS in Geology from the University of Missouri at Columbia. He started his career in 1980 as a mudlogger in the Western Overthrust of Wyoming. The following year, he took a position as an exploration geologist in the eastern United States.

In the intervening years, he has worked most of the basins of the continental US, as well as numerous international areas. As a consultant and as a staff geologist for companies including Equitable Resources, Quicksilver Resources and XTO Energy, he has focused upon basin-scale assessments of both conventional and non-conventional resources.

In 1998, he was awarded the A.I. Levorsen Award for his work in the structural genesis of Northwestern Ohio. He has published numerous papers both domestically and abroad.

Currently, he holds the position of Division Geologist in the Special Projects Group, Utah CBM, Wyoming Fontenelle and Piceance Basin for XTO Energy, located in Fort Worth, Texas. 

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December, 2009

Ozona Sandstone, Val Verde Basin, Texas: 

Synergetic stratigraphy and depositional history in a Permian foredeep basin.

 

H. Scott Hamlin, Ph.D.

 

The Ozona study area encompasses about 800 sq. mi. in Crockett County, Texas.  The Ozona sandstone is a record of Permian synorgenic sedimentation in a foreland basin.  The Ozona comprises terrigenous clastic slope and basin systems overlain by mixed clastic-carbonate shelf-ramp systems.  Ozona sandstones form low-permeability gas reservoirs in Crockett County, Texas.  Wire-line logs and cores were used to map Ozona genetic stratigraphy and to reconstruct the depositional and tectonic history during the final phase of the Ouachita orogeny.  Ozona depositional systems are comprised of sandy turbidite channel and lobe genetic facies enclosed in laterally extensive muddy turbidite sheets and hemipelagic drapes.  Channel and lobe complexes and turbidite sheets together form basin-floor apron systems.  Coeval slope systems are mud-dominated products of mass transport processes.  Sediment dispersal systems evolved from point sourced to line sourced. 

H. Scott Hamlin, Ph.D. is a research scientist with the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology.  He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.  His research interests include depositional systems, stratigraphy, reservoir characterization and hydrogeology.

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November, 2009

Devonian Carbonate Platform of Nevada: Facies, Surfaces, Cycles, 

Sequences, Reefs, and Cataclysmic Alamo Impact Breccia

 John E. Warme, Professor Emeritus, Department of Geology and Geological Engineering, Colorado School of Mines

 The Devonian shallow-water carbonate platform of southeastern Nevada exhibits a gallery of features that can be studied for their significance related to programs of global mineral exploration and development both for hydrocarbons and for important metallic and other commodities. Examples include dolomitized porous platform beds, platform margin and mid-platform organic reefs, regional lowstand karst systems, and transgressive or highstand seals. In addition, this specific platform contains the partial crater and thick impact breccias from the major Late Devonian extraterrestrial Alamo Impact Event; impact craters also produce such commodities.

 The carbonate platform is comprised of the familiar Lower Devonian Sevy and Middle Devonian Simonson dolostone formations and the Upper Devonian Guilmette mainly limestone formation; recent work on these units has broken out some new formations and members. These rocks are superbly exposed in numerous mountain ranges, centered about 150 km (100 mi) north of Las Vegas, where they total as much as ~1500 m (5000 ft) in thickness. They exhibit continuous exposures of a classic, long-lived, shallow-water carbonate platform, comprised of a hierarchy of hundreds of partial to complete shallowing-upward Milankovitch-scale cycles, each representing tens to hundreds of thousands of years. The cycles are grouped into sequences bounded by regionally significant exposure surfaces or flooded intervals. The cycles and sequences show up on surface gamma-ray profiles, which can also be interpreted as sea-level cycles.

 Dolomitization in the Sevy and Simonson is likely linked to long-term exposure and related deep underlying karstified intervals. The less-altered Guilmette exhibits characteristic shallowing-upward limestone-to-dolostone cycles that contain typical carbonate-platform fossil assemblages, display stacked biostromes and bioherms of flourishing and diverse calcareous sponges (stromatoporoids) and sparse corals, and are punctuated by channeled quartz sandstones. The Guilmette also contains completely exposed reefs. One is ~50-m (165 ft) in thickness, constructed mainly of diverse stromatoporoids, and later exposed and karstified across the crest. These buildups exemplify such Devonian structures known from surface and hydrocarbon-bearing subsurface locations worldwide, notably in the Alberta basin of Canada and the Middle East.

 Of special interest is the stratigraphically anomalous Alamo Breccia that now represents the formal middle member of the Guilmette Formation. This spectacular cataclysmic megabreccia, produced by the Alamo Impact Event, is as thick as 100 m and may be the best exposed, proven bolide impact breccia and impact debris field on earth. It contains widespread intervals generated by the seismic shock, ejecta curtain, tsunami surge, and runoff from a major marine impact. Different facies of the Alamo Breccia are placed into regional genetic Realms, labeled Crater Rim, Ring, Runup, Runoff, Seismic, and Runout/Resurge.  Each Realm exhibits a specific combination of processes and products that help interpret the varied facies of the Alamo Breccia, as well as the depth of excavation and direction to the target zone.

 

 John Warme is Professor Emeritus at the Colorado School of Mines. He is a native Californian, obtained his B.A. from Augustana College (Rock Island, Illinois), Ph. D. from UCLA, was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland), and taught at Rice University where he was the first Ewing Professor of Oceanography before moving to CSM in 1979. Warme has worked extensively and conducts field seminars in the High Atlas Jurassic rift carbonate system of Morocco, deepwater sandstones and submarine canyons of southern California, and offers AAPG Geotour raft trips down the Grand Canyon. His current research focuses on the Devonian Alamo Impact Breccia in Nevada, which he named and recognized in 1990 as a stratigraphic anomaly and cataclysmic unit, and Poncho's Radical Runup, a spectacular ancient landslide and cross-canyon debris flow that he documented in the Grand Canyon. Warme is Past-President, Honorary Member, and Twenhofel Medalist of The Society for Sedimentary Geology (SEPM) and founding President of the SEPM Foundation. He has been an AAPG Distinguished Lecturer, and recipient of the Grover E. Murray Memorial Distinguished Educator Award.

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October, 2009

Eagleford Shale Exploration Models: Depositional Controls on Reservoir Properties
Kevin P. Corbett, Wrangler Resources, LLC; 1801 Broadway, Suite 910, Denver, CO 80202,
USA

KEVIN P. CORBETT, PhD., is presently a principal at Wrangler Resources, of Denver CO.  Dr. Corbett, received his PhD. in structural geology from the University of California in 1988, MS in geology from Texas A&M, and BS in geology from the University of Alaska.

Dr. Corbett has worked as both a geologist and geophysicist for several independent companies, including Cimarex, Anschultz and Marathon.
Areas Dr. Corbett has worked include the Anadarko, Permian, Michigan, Williston and Gulf Coast basins, as well as numerous international basins.

Dr. Corbett has authored a dozen refereed journal articles, published proceedings papers, maps, and short course notes, fifteen published abstracts and presented more than thirty-five papers at international professional technical meetings, symposia and commercial conferences.

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September, 2009

CENTRAL UTAH THRUST BELT, “WE’VE ONLY JUST BEGUN TO EXPLORE”

By Mike Pinnell, Floyd Moulton and Greg Wood

Chief Oil & Gas, Salt Lake City, Utah

Recent major hydrocarbon discoveries by Wolverine Gas and Oil in Central Utah’s underexplored Thrust Belt province have revitalized thrust belt exploration in the western United States. The Sevier Orogeny is a mostly Cretaceous age, compressional event that created a number of thrusted structures, many of which produce oil and gas, or will eventually produce oil and gas, in a trend that runs from Alaska to Patagonia. The Laramide Orogeny is a mostly Tertiary age, compressional event that is more basement involved than the Sevier Orogeny. These major events actually initiated in Jurassic with the separation of the European and African plates on the east from the North and South American (NSA) plates on the west. As rifting divided these incredible landmasses, the Farralon and associated oceanic plates bordering western North and South America collided at the subduction-creating margin. But instead of deflecting downward at a relatively steep angle, the Farralon plate remained fairly flat, and continued a relative eastward motion substantially parallel to the overriding NSA plates. Thrusting resulted along the entire sub-continental, eastern margin of the Farralon plate. This thrusting proliferated in the area where a Paleozoic hingeline once persisted. This is the ancient continental-marine transitional area that received substantial, continuous Paleozoic sedimentation as the continental margin gradually extended farther west prior to Sevier tectonics. Thus, the Central North American portion of this thrust belt is often, and correctly, referred to as the “Hingeline-overthrust” belt.

Thin skinned thrusting persisted in front of the Farralon plate until it encountered the much thicker portion of inner continental crust; then something very different happened. Tectonic signatures shifted from thin skinned tectonics on the west to thick skinned tectonics on the east. At the same time, the North American Plate began to rotate resulting in oblique convergence which added to the lateral stress. Most faulting in the thicker portion of the crust involved basement block adjustment frequently taking place along zones of weakness in the thick, Precambrian section. A wrench component in the faulting was common. The result was large uplifts and intermontane valleys like the Wind River Mountains and Basin, or the Uinta Mountains and Basin. We call this basement involved style of adjustment the Laramide Orogeny. Contemporaneously, smaller scale Laramide uplifts occurred that, on occasion, created oil and gas fields. The difference between the Sevier and Laramide orogenies is in style, rather than in time interval. For example, Sevier style thrusting continued in some areas like Charleston-Nebo thrust of Central Utah, after Laramide style had initiated in other areas like the San Rafael Swell in what is now the Colorado Plateau. For this reason, one can find trends where Sevier tectonism can be younger than Laramide events. And because the Farralon plate continued to move east under the upper continental crust, younger Laramide adjustment persisted quite late into the Tertiary, while Sevier tectonics ended in early Tertiary.

Both Sevier and Laramide orogenies created oil and gas traps. Timing of hydrocarbon migration, however, is the critical factor for viable hydrocarbon accumulation both in the Sevier thin-skinned, as well as the Laramide thick-skinned regimes.

The Canadian Thrust Belt has a primarily Devonian hydrocarbon source where these Paleozoic hydrocarbons migrated easterly, up the thrust ramps, to structural closures. First significant production was established in the 1920s. The fields, however, contain mostly gas, perhaps 42 TCFG originally in place, occurring primarily in fractured Mississippian and Devonian age carbonate rocks. Sometimes H2S is present in varying amounts. As many as four or five successive west to east thrust sheets are productive.  Sometimes production is from multi-plex, repeated, stacked reservoirs. The massive oil that was generated prior to the gas phase was able to migrate easterly earlier than the creation of most thrust belt structures. Where did all that oil go? Look to the McMurray area where over 1,700 billion barrels are trapped in the Athabascan tar trend in massive strato-unconformity traps of Devonian carbonates and Cretaceous age sandstones.

In the Wyoming productive salient, there were two major hydrocarbon source rocks: Permian age Phosphoria Formation and Cretaceous age shales. Unfortunately the Permian source rocks delivered their hydrocarbons prior to the creation of the Sevier thrust structures, with the exception of the massive Labarge Anticline. Labarge was an anticline that formed early enough to accumulate methane at the end of Phosphoria hydrocarbon generation. What was once an enormous accumulation of 166 TCF methane became altered to mostly CO2 and H2S by later, heated water injection.  A “paltry” 23 TCF methane remains in this anticline and is being produced from a few wells by Exxon and Cimmarex. The CO2 is used for secondary oil recovery at Lost Soldier and other Laramide structures east of the thrust belt. The methane is sold to local pipelines. The rich Cretaceous shale are the source rocks for the Sevier age thrust structures, but only in a relatively small, sixty mile trend of the only productive thrust, the Absaroka system. Other thrust segments are essentially barren which explains the lengthy time that our industry spent in finding the first production in 1975 after 300 wells were drilled over a 90 year time span. The key here is a localized, Tertiary depositional region, the Fossil Basin, which depressed the Cretaceous shales deep enough to generate oil and gas. Hydrocarbons migrated essentially westward, up along the thrusts faults and into the reservoirs which produce both oil and gas mostly from Jurassic Nugget sandstone but also from Mississippian carbonates in one large anticlinal complex, the Whitney Canyon-Carter Creek Field. A better timed, more pro-active hydrocarbon source system would have resulted in perhaps ten times the produced reserves of 8 TCF gas and one billion barrels of oil in the Wyoming salient.

What happened to the Permian Phosphoria oil that migrated early? Some if it was trapped in subtle, primal anticlinal folds which formed possibly as early as late Jurassic, during the initial separation of North America and Europe. These subtle structures were modified into more pronounced, tighter features during later stage, Laramide compressional tectonics. Lost Soldier-Wertz Field on the northeastern margin of the Green River Basin of south-central Wyoming is a good example. Prior to Laramide, it was a low relief, large, solitary, oil and gas filled structure. During later Laramide wrench-compressional adjustment, the single structure was subdivided into two, tightly folded anticlines with the gas cap preserved in a lower anticline and the oil leg in the higher structure. Vast amount of hydrocarbons were lost during this structural transformation. This amazing field produces oil and gas from every porous rock under closure, including fractured Precambrian granite. With cumulative reserves of 450 MMBOE and still chugging along at 6,000 BOPD from only 2,200 acres, it is a winner. There are several nearby structures with a different geologic history that are not productive. The greatest surprise may be that there are several undrilled anticlines in the same area with the same geologic history as Lost Soldier-Wertz. The lesson here is that not all Laramide structures will produce hydrocarbons. Our studies indicate anticlines that initiated structural closure prior to Phosphoria hydrocarbon migration have the best chance to be commercial.

The Central Utah Thrust Belt source rock history is more like the Canadian productive salient and is very encouraging for the accumulation of very large reserves. Paleozoic sediments are again the source rock with oil and gas migrating easterly up the thrust ramps from Mississippian marls and shales. Covenant Field is a smallish structure with a water driven oil accumulation that has already produced over eight million barrels of low sulfur, 41 gravity oil, but no gas, and delivers over 8,000 BOPD from 20 wells. More wells are planned. Field production has not yet started a decline. Wolverine’s latest discovery, Providence field, has two repeated pay horizons, a situation not known in the Wyoming thrust belt, but common in Canada. Oil, gas and condensate are reported here where oil gravity varies from the mid 40s to the low 50s; both CO2 and sulfur are present. Jurassic Navajo Sandstone is the primary reservoir at the Covenant and Providence fields with several stratigraphic and structural caveats yet to be revealed.

The Central Utah Thrust Belt contains other potential source rocks. Permian age Phosphoria Formation equivalent may be one. Another is Cretaceous age shale in a scenario similar to the Wyoming Salient, but only for the northern portion of Central Utah and only for the easternmost Gunnison-Salina-Nebo trust trend.

Timing of hydrocarbon migration is always an issue and central Utah is no exception. Other operators have suggested that oil and gas migrated early in Central Utah, even prior to the later stages of Sevier age thrusting. This would be prior to the forming of Covenant and Providence anticlines. Hydrocarbons may have been sequestered in early-forming structures, like the timing for Laramide production already noted. We have seen some evidence of this possibility in our regional stratigraphic studies, but more work is needed.

We believe the future is very bright for the Utah Thrust Belt. The Navajo Sandstone, often sealed by salt, is a 1,000 foot thick, windblown reservoir with the best porosity and permeability in the lower, and so far, unproductive portions of the formation. Many more Mesozoic and Paleozoic reservoir rocks have the potential to be productive. Mississippian carbonates look especially favorable and may be prolific producers in Central Utah, but only two wells have been drilled to that formation in the primary, thrusted area of interest covering 3,000 square miles. All five of Utah’s major thrust sequences have the potential to be productive, like the Canadian salient, but have hardly been drilled. Virtually all of the drilling on these structures took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s based on the rudimentary science of that era. The presently (and, so far only) productive Gunnison-Salina Thrust, prior to discovery of Covenant Field, was a 90 mile structural anomaly with only two wells drilled to Navajo Sandstone. It appears this anticlinal trend will develop into a “String of pearls” with at least six productive structures: there are two down with four to go. In all, we have determined that at least 40 to 50 undrilled anticlines are presently associated with all five of the major thrust sequences in Central Utah.

We have a very long way to go before we have explored and developed the entire hydrocarbon potential of the Central Utah Thrust Belt. Our short journey has been  exciting and enjoyable, and the rewards may be astounding. Paraphrasing John Paul Jones and Karen Carpenter, “We’ve only just begun to explore.”

 

Michael L. Pinnell

8171 Old Coventry Circle

Sandy, UT 84093

Mike is Rocky Mountain exploration manager for Chief Oil and Gas, a Dallas based hydrocarbon exploration and production company. He has been with Chief for two years. After receiving BS and MS degrees in geology in 1970 and 1972 from BYU, he went to work for Exxon in Midland Texas as a geophysicist. He has subsequently worked for several independent oil and gas companies as both geophysicist and geologist in Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

His recent work has been in the Central Utah Thrust and Fold Belt which is an approximately 30 mile wide, 200 mile long northeast directed anomalous structural trend more-or-less paralleling Interstate 15. Large reserves of much needed oil and gas are awaiting discovery in this trend. Several very large fields have already been discovered.  Mike’s enjoys innovative geologic concept illustrations which he uses in company presentations and talks he gives about the geology of the Rocky Mountains.