Night School – Deep water Sedimentation and Geochemistry (Virtual course)

Part 1 l Deep-water slope channel complex reservoirs
Facilitator: Bryan Cronin
Date: Wednesday 22 July
6:00pm – 8:00pm

Part 2 l Deep-water lobe complex reservoirs
Facilitator: Bryan Cronin
Date: Wednesday 29 July
6:00pm – 8:00pm

Part 3 l Geochemistry: Concepts and Definitions
Facilitator: Paul Logan
Date: Thursday 27 August
6:00pm – 8:00pm

Part 4 l Geochemistry: Geochemical Methods & Interpretation
Facilitator: Paul Logan
Date: Tuesday 1 September
6:00pm – 8:00pm

The Geochemistry parts of the course will cover these topics:

Concepts and definitions:

• Organic Chemistry
  • Hydrocarbons and non-hydrocarbons
  • Composition of Petroleum & Related Organic Matter
    • Natural Gas, Crude oil & Condensate, Bitumen, Kerogen
  • Isotopes
  • The origin of petroleum
    • The origin of oil, The carbon cycle, Depositional environments of source rocks, Organic inputs to source rocks
  • Transformation of organic matter in the sedimentary system
    • Diagenesis, Catagenesis and Metagenesis
  • Migration & accumulation of petroleum
    • Primary, secondary & tertiary migration, petroleum accumulation
  • Post-migration alteration of petroleum
    • Thermal alteration, biodegradation, de-asphalting, water washing, inspissation, chemical oxidation

Geochemical Methods & Interpretation

• Geochemical Reconnaissance Surveying
  • Offshore & onshore
• Source Rock Evaluation
  • Sediment Sampling, Screening Analyses, Detailed Analyses
• Fluid Characterisation
  • Sampling, Natural gas, Crude oil & condensate
• Correlating Fluids to Source Rocks
• Source Rock Modelling
• Source Rock Volumetrics

Who should attend
Aspiring, future leaders in the oil and gas industry who want to acquire skills beyond the academic and technical and obtain insights into the commercially orientated analysis. Acquire the global perspectives essential to professional success.

This course will go ahead regardless of the number of attendees.

Bryan Cronin is a geologist with 30 years of technical experience with deep-water turbidites at outcrop, on the sea floor and in the subsurface. He is currently principal geologist for Tullow Oil, in the Exploration Department, based in London.

He was an independent consultant (2005-2016), working on deep-water reservoirs in the North Sea, Africa, SE Asia, South America, the former Soviet Union and in other areas. He has run over 103 commercial field courses to the Alps, the Pyrenees, California, Ireland, SE Spain, NE and S England, and Turkey between 1996 and 2019. He instructed for Petroskills and Nautilus and ran week-long classroom-based courses on Turbidite Reservoirs, Sandstone Reservoirs, Basic Petroleum Geology amongst others. He is Honorary Professor at University of Aberdeen, The Robert Gordon University and Hangzhou Petrochina Institute for Petroleum Geology.

He is still involved in education and training with MSc and PhD students and oil company employees, most recently with the PRACCS research group where he was joint principal investigator with Professor Ben Kneller, working in southern Chile, Turkey, France, Argentina, Tibet and Mexico.

Professor Cronin was awarded the William Smith Fund by the Geological Society, London, in 2007.

His list of publications is extensive and in most mainstream peer reviewed journals.

After an early career with British Gas, Getty Oil, and Hamilton Oil – where his work resulted in the discovery of the Hamilton and Hamilton North gas fields along with the Douglas Oil Field in the East Irish Sea Basin – Paul moved into African exploration in 1994 with BHP, finishing as General Manager in Angola.

Paul then joined Heritage Oil as Chief Geologist in 2005, and with his team found over 2 billion bbls of oil in Uganda and the Miran Gas Field in Kurdistan, Northern Iraq, with over 9 TCF in place.  Paul was Exploration Manager of Taipan Resources from 2013 to 2015.  Since that time, he has been CEO of a start-up focussed on the UK Onshore.

Paul was also an Associate Lecturer of the Open University for many years, teaching a variety of Earth Science courses including working as Course Director on a Sequence Stratigraphy Summer Field School.