| dc.description.abstract | Deepwater turbidites and unconventional shale reservoirs are two most important hydrocarbon resources in North America. To fully understand the hydrocarbon potentials of the deepwater reservoirs, we first need to utilize outcrops as analogs to help build good reservoir models because they are often easier to access and characterize than subsurface data. The Jackfork Group in Arkansas is a good example of deepwater turbidite outcrops. It has been studied for more than 40 years by both industry and academy. During my M.Sc. and early stage of PhD years (2009-2012), I successfully characterized the Jackfork Group at the Baumgartner Quarry and used it as an analog for reservoir modeling and simulation in real deepwater GOM fields. The Baumgartner Quarry work exhibits a good difference in simulated reservoir performance between channelized and sheet-like reservoirs. Following the Quarry work, I extended the outcrop characterization to the entire Jackfork Group within a large area from southeastern Oklahoma to western Arkansas. I compiled, described and characterized 20 nearby Jackfork outcrops and subsurface data including Kirby Section, DeGray Section, Shell Rex-Timber Well #1, Dierks Spillway, Mena Section, Big Rock Quarry, Friendship Roadcuts, Rich Mountain Anticline and Potato Hills gas fields. I tested chemostrata within Kirby; DeGray and Dierks sections in order to correlated them and build a sequence stratigraphic framework in the downdip basinal part of the Ouachita Basin. The final part of the Jackfork Group research is a complete sequence stratigraphic framework from updip slope to downslope basinal settings. This is the first time such a regional correlation has been completed for the Jackfork across the Ouachita Mountains, and is of great value for understanding updip to downdip facies changes in the Jackfork.
After I finished the Jackfork Group research, I became interested in the 3 Woodford Shale cores from Marathon Oil Company, the company I am working for. Three Woodford cores, The Teague, Ridenour and Shi-Randall are located in the updip shelf, downdip slope and basin, respectively and they well represent the sequence stratigraphic framework during late Devonian time. Marathon Oil ran Micro-CT scan with the 3 cores. By reprocessing and segmenting on these 3-D raw Micro-CT scan data, one can quantitatively characterize the bioturbation and micro facies of the whole core. By comparing bioturbation Micro-CT results with well logs, geochemistry, routine core analysis and chemostrata, I built the regional sequence stratigraphic framework over the core area.
This dissertation mainly combines 3 AAPG Bulletin papers (one published, one in revision and one to be submitted). The first AAPG Bulletin paper (Chapter 1) is about reservoir modeling and simulation of the Jackfork Group in the Baumgartner Quarry, Arkansas. The second AAPG Bulletin paper (Chapter 2) is the research results on the integrated chemostrata and sequence stratigraphic framework of the Jackfork Group in Arkansas. The third AAPG Bulletin paper (Chapter 4) is the research results of bioturbation, chemostrata and integrated stratigraphic framework of Woodford Shale in southeast Anadarko basin, Oklahoma. One part of the Woodford Shale research (Chapter 4) has been also accepted by the URTeC 2015 Conference in San Antonio, Texas as an Oral Presentation. The dissertation also contains another published paper in Journal of Earth Science and Engineering which is a review of the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (dGOM) exploration and production activities for the past 6 years (Chapter 3). In addition, I wrote two chapters about deepwater GOM E&P and geological modeling in the textbook: "Stratigraphic Reservoir Characterization for Petroleum Geologists, Geophysicists, and Engineers, 2nd Edition" by Dr. Roger M. Slatt published in 2013 by Elsevier. I have presented my PhD work in AAPG, UrTEC, GCAGS and GSA conferences with 6 abstracts from 2010-2015. | en_US |
