Fundamentals of Structural Geology

Course Duration: 5 days, including lecture-based modules and hands-on exercises

Who Should Attend: Development and exploration geologists, geophysicists, petroleum engineers, managers, and technical personnel

You Will Learn To:

• Understand principles of stress and strain (deformation) in the context of petroleum exploration and development and other applications such as geothermal and carbon capture.
• Understand the types, mechanics/development, and distribution of fractures, faults, and folds and their role in hydrocarbon migration, entrapment, and potential compartmentalization
• Integrate regional studies within various tectonic regimes to understand better and predict structural aspects at local and reservoir scales.
• Develop and interpret key maps and other display formats of structural data.

About the Course: Understanding the structural geology and environment remains a critical aspect of petroleum exploration and development. This course is designed to give participants a detailed understanding of structural concepts and the interpretation of seismic data and other datasets. Using an extensive applied “hands-on” approach, participants will be exposed to a diversity of world-wide case examples with complementary exercises, both of an individual and group nature.

Topics Include:

 Discussion of stress (pressure) and strain (deformation) as a fundamental basis for structural studies, both in terms of developing a sound structural “story” and for predictive aspects at reservoir levels.

• Interpretation of structures in:
  • Extensional tectonics: normal faults, basement rifting, intra sediment mobile salt, and growth fault structures, and associated sedimentation.
  • Compressional tectonics: Structural geometry of common fold-thrust structures including fold accommodation faults, detachment and faulted detachment folds, fault-propagation folds, fault-bend folds, fold-thrust systems, thrust fault sequencing, and breakthrough structure, and associated uplift unroofing and sedimentation.
  • Strike-slip tectonics: crustal-, regional-, and local-scale strike-slip tectonics, syntectonic sequence stratigraphic and facies framework (e.g., alluvial fan, fluvial, deltaic, evaporates, landslide, etc.), structural and stratigraphic migration and trapping mechanisms.
  • And recognition/interpretation of alternate styles of deformation within a given terrane (e.g., understanding extensional or strike-slip components of deformation in a dominantly compressional terrane).

• Structural analysis of well logs, seismic data, and maps
  • Inferences of structural styles from well log and seismic datasets
  • Calculation and mapping of fault displacement gradients, fault terminations, contour closure against faults, etc.
  • Age of fault movement
  • Alternative interpretations in ambiguous or incomplete datasets.

• Structural modes of reservoir compartmentalization
• Fault seal analysis (determining the integrity of the reservoir, including during production-related pressure changes)
• Geologic data / geophysical data / petrophysical data integration (building the best model using all available data)
• Growth histories (including integration of stratigraphic aspects)
• Cross section restoration and balancing
• Seismic interpretation pitfalls and data artifacts