Education Week 2008

The Architecture of Fluvial Reservoirs (SC0802)

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN

Instructor: Andrew D. Miall
Date: October 27 - 28, 2008
Time: 8:00am to 4:30pm
Duration: 2 days
Max. Attendance: 25 Participants

CSPG Member Earlybird Registration Deadline: September 15, 2008
CSPG Member Registration Deadline: October 15, 2008
Course Fee: CSPG Member Earlybird: $750 +GST | CSPG Member: $825 +GST

Location: TBA

Course Description:

Significant volumes of oil and gas are stored in fluvial reservoirs, including the giant fields at Prudhoe Bay (Alaska), Daqing (China), Messla and Sarir (Libya), Statfjord and many other nearby fields in the northern North Sea, the Athabasca oil sands, Mannville and Belly River fields in Alberta, and hundreds of small fields throughout the world. Exploitation of many of these fields has provided a wide array of data and techniques for use in exploration and development. Considerable potential remains for additional discoveries in such areas as Andean South America, Australia (onshore and offshore) and southeast Asia.

The focus of this course will be on the reservoir architecture and sequence stratigraphy of fluvial systems. The course commences with a detailed description of the variations in fluvial style and channel and bar architecture, and will provide a broad understanding of fluvial depositional processes. The main control on large-scale fluvial architecture is regional tectonics. This course will contain descriptions of fundamental basinal controls on fluvial systems, including the effects of tectonism on fluvial stratal patterns and sequences. Information and ideas presented in the course, including a discussion of the strengths and limitations of various subsurface mapping techniques, will contribute to the development of fluvial sandstone production and exploration models. Participants are presented with numerous case studies from basins around the world. Key concepts are illustrated with practical exercises, including subsurface analyses and an outcrop photomosaic analysis.

Instructor Bio(s):

Andrew D. Miall B.Sc., Ph.D., D.Sc., FRSC
Professor of Geology, University of Toronto

Andrew Miall has been Professor of Geology at the Geology Department, University of Toronto since 1979, was Acting Chairman in 1986, Associate Chairman from 1986 to 1990, and again from 1995 to 1998. He is the inaugural holder of the Gordon Stollery Chair in Basin Analysis and Petroleum Geology at the University of Toronto. He specialize in teaching and research in the study of sedimentary basins, with a particular research interest in sequence stratigraphy, and in the sedimentology of nonmarine (continental) sandstones, and their value as reservoir rocks for oil and gas. He teaches a popular science-for-non-scientists course at the University of Toronto entitled "Geology and Public Issues", which deals with geological hazards, water resources, and global change.

Andrew Miall was born in Brighton, England, in 1944, and was educated in England, completing a B.Sc. at University of London in 1965. He emigrated to Canada in that year and joined the graduate research program in Arctic geology at University of Ottawa, gaining a Ph.D. from this work in 1969. He worked for several companies in Calgary for three years after completing his education, and then joined the Geological Survey of Canada in Calgary in 1972 as a Research Scientist in the Arctic Islands section, studying regional geology and gathering background information on oil and gas prospects in the Arctic Islands. He wound down his Arctic work in the early 1980s after moving to Toronto, and is engaged in several projects in the Colorado Plateau of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado.

Miall was Editor of the national Canadian journal Geoscience Canada from 1982 to 1989, and was Co-Chief Editor of the Elsevier journal Sedimentary Geology from 1987 to 2005. He is currently serving as the sedimentology editor for Earth Science Reviews. He is the author of the book "Principles of Sedimentary Basin Analysis", a research-level synthesis. A third edition of this book appeared in 1999, and it has now sold more than 10,000 copies worldwide. A second book, "The geology of fluvial deposits: sedimentary facies, basin analysis and petroleum geology" was published in April 1996. A third book "The geology of stratigraphic sequences" appeared in the fall of 1996. "Canada Rocks", authored by N. Eyles and A. D. Miall, appeared in the summer of 2007.

Miall has also been the editor of four technical books, plus many research papers. He was a Distinguished Lecturer for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 1986-1987. In 1992 he was named the Earth Resources Foundation-Esso Australia Distinguished Lecturer for that year by the Earth Resources Foundation of the University of Sydney, and toured Australia. He has also been a guest lecturer of the Academy of Science, China (1985), the Geological Society of South Africa (1979), and the Academy of Sciences, Poland (1978), a Visiting Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (1990), a Visiting Professor at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada (1977), a sabbatical-leave visitor at University of Oxford, U. K. (1991-1992), and the Boyd Lecturer in Petroleum Exploration at the University of Texas, Austin (1995). He has lectured widely throughout Canada and the United States, and has also lectured or undertaking consulting work in Venezuela, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, and New Zealand. From 2000-2004 he served as Canada's representative to the NATO Science and the Environment "Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society."

Andrew Miall was awarded the Past President's Medal of the Geological Association of Canada in 1983. In 1992 he was awarded the D.Sc. degree, a Higher Doctorate, from the University of London, and also in 1992 was honoured by the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists with the Award for Outstanding Paper of 1991 in the Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, for some of his work in sequence stratigraphy. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada in 1995, and is currently serving a two-year term as Vice-President of the Academy of Science. He was awarded an Honourary Doctorate from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, in March 2001.

Andrew is married to Charlene Miall, Professor of Sociology at McMaster University, with whom he is working on a project to investigate the evolution of the earth-sciences in Canada, with particular reference to environmental issues, such as global change.