Overview

This course is practical in nature, revolving around the elements of pressure plots, data to populate them (e.g. RFT/MDT and LOT/FIT) and their interpretation, and an exploration of how to conduct useful pressure prediction/detection (both pore pressure and fracture pressure). The course covers topics such as the origin of abnormal pressures in the subsurface, seal breach, seal capacity, hydrocarbon column height and hydrodynamic aquifers. There is a mixture of lectures, discussion and exercises. Day Three will include sessions covering pore pressure issues as they relate to SE Asia geology, and where drawing examples and case material from where the course participants come dominantly located.

Who Should Attend

• Geologists
  
• Geophysicists
  
• Petrophysicists
  
• Engineers
  
• Personnel preparing for future drilling, but also for the ability to incorporate pressure data and concepts into operations and future exploration programmes. Appreciation of pressure prediction methods and their uncertainties pressures is also needed by management, especially when the company operates in high-risk environments, such as HPHT and Deep-Water.

Key Learning Objectives

• To explain the relevance of pressure interpretation in exploration/production/drilling
  
• To offer insights into the relationship between pressure and subsurface geological conditions, including mechanisms which create abnormal pressures, and the role of lithology in maintaining and distributing excess pressure
  
• Summary of the challenges of high pressure sediments, with particular reference to all types of tectonic environments including thrust belts
  
• Link throughout the course, where relevant, to subsurface challenges in SE Asia, especially Malay Basin, offshore north Borneo (Sarawak, Brunei and Sabah), Mahakam Delta and Gulf of Thailand

About Course Director

Professor Richard Swarbrick is currently an independent consultant, based in Durham, England. He has 10 years’ experience with Mobil Oil, followed by 15 years teaching petroleum geology and researching subsurface pressures, and for the past 10 years developed GeoPressure Technology/Ikon GeoPressure as a specialist company providing industry solutions to subsurface pressure challenges.

Richard continues to be involved in university research and publishes on aspects of pressure generation, seal capacity and pressure retention, prediction methodology and hydrodynamic trapping.

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