Petroleum Geology for Non-Geologists Training

Day 1

• The Earth: its properties, internal structure and age
• Earth sciences: definition and overview
• Various types of rocks, their origins and examples
• Rocks associated with oil and gas:
• Sedimentary rocks: their origin, key features and associated terminology
• Depositional environments, processes and the concept of facies
• Introduction to geological time, principles of stratigraphy and stratigraphic relations:
• The concepts of relative and absolute time
• Measurement of geological time
• The Uniformitarian Principle
• The Law of Superposition
• Unconformities
• Sequence startigraphy
• Establishing lithostratigraphic and biostratigraphic units
• Correlation.
• Principles of structural geology: various types of geological structures (folds, faults and thrusts) and their relationship to oil and gas occurrence
• Definition of oil and gas fields
• Habitat of oil and gas and factor that control their occurrence
• Processes that control the occurrence of oil and gas fields
• Geological controls on oil and gas occurrence

Day 2

• Sedimentary basins:

– Definition

– Formation and development

– Global distribution

– Exploration status

– Production status

• Association between sedimentary basins and oil and gas occurrence
• Overview of plate tectonics
• Plate tectonics control on the formation, evolution and characteristics of sedimentary
• basins
• Petroleum substances – chemical composition of oil and gas
• Petroleum systems analysis in terms of elements and processes:

– Source rocks: origin, burial history and maturation

– Generation of petroleum

– Migration of petroleum

– Petroleum reservoir rocks and their properties

– Oil and gas traps

– Seals

• The petroleum play and petroleum events chart

Day 3

• Exploring for oil and gas – sources of data
• Acquisition and interpretation of geological and geophysical data

– Seismic sequence stratigraphy

• Subsurface mapping

– Various types of contour maps

• Resources and reserves: definitions, classification and quantification

– Definition and classification

• Reserves estimation:

– Volumetric (the deterministic and probabilistic methods)

• Leads and prospects
• Risk and risk analysis
• Play fairway analysis
• Shale oil, shale gas, oil sands, coal bed methane and gas hydrates

Day 4

• Acquisition and interpretation of open hole logs
• Various types of well logs
• Acquisition of well log data
• Principles of well log data interpretation
• Practical session

The global petroleum industry

• Some recent trends in the petroleum industry
• Importance of oil in modern societies
• Overview of prices and politics of oil and gas – historical review of the price of oil over the
• past 150 years (since 1861)
• The main events of the last decade
• Review of the major players in the past 25 years – private oil company rankings in terms
• of turnover and market capitalization
• State oil company rankings
• Biofuels – a panacea?
• Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
• Definitions of reserves
• Global distribution of oil and gas reserves
• Sources of information
• Giant fields – definition and significance
• The world’s top 25 oil fields – locations and reserves
• Regions of high potential for future discoveries
• Global oil and gas production
• Oil and gas reserves/production ratios
• Future world energy supplies:

– Concept of ‘peak oil and gas’

– Review of various ‘peak oil and gas’ scenarios

• Selected recent publications