Applied Biostratigraphy - A Critical Tool for Subsurface Prediction and Characterisation

The subsurface is a hugely valuable resource in terms of both “extractive” industries and in the Energy Transition including its impact on ground model building for engineers. Biostratigraphy is a critical tool in understanding and characterising the subsurface and plays a pivotal role at all scales from global, through regionally and basin-scales, prospects and even down to individual assets. 

The course will introduce the fundamental concepts that biostratigraphy brings to this understanding – principally dating, correlation and environmental determination – and how these are integrated, at all scales, under the umbrella of Sequence Stratigraphy. The predictive power of the latter is emphasised and demonstrated.

Similar principles are also demonstrated in operational (i.e. drilling/engineering) situations such as casing-point/TD determinations and bio-/geo-steering.

The course follows a pathway involving an explanation of the theory of each component, followed by a practical exercise that demonstrates the principle using mostly “real world” examples. Gradually the exercises become more-and-more integrational with two larger-scale exercises culminating in predictive outcomes using actual situations from Middle East carbonates and Gulf of Mexico clastics.

For operational demonstrations, delegates will “role play” the duties of a wellsite biostratigrapher and biosteer a horizontal well in “real time”.

Note: This course does not teach you how to recognise and identify fossils. It focusses on the applications of biostratigraphical data to the understanding of the subsurface. 

Our approach is not about bugs, taxon identifications etc. I suppose it could be summed up as helping people become “informed users/buyers of applied biostratigraphical services/reports” rather than being able to be an applied biostratigrapher.