- Friday, February 22, 2019
- 3:30 PM–4:30 PM
- North Hall 078
The Department of Geology, Geography and Environmental Studies invites you to a seminar:
Friday, February 22, 3:30pm, North Hall 078, Refreshments will be provided!
"Seeing through the earth beneath our feet: Using geoscience to help predict how groundwater and hydrocarbons behave miles beneath us."
By Dr. John Solum, Shell Technology Center
Understanding how hydrocarbons flow in the subsurface is important for a number of reasons including determining how many wells might be needed to develop an oil reservoir, and what must be done to ensure those wells are drilled safely. Many of the same concepts that apply to hydrocarbon reservoirs also apply to groundwater aquifers, and can help to address controls on leakage of fluids (or contaminants) from shallower to deeper aquifers, or from deeper aquifers to the surface. Predicting subsurface fluid flow requires integrating information ranging from a number of different sources operating at different scales including geophysical seismic surveys (a form of remote sensing) to thin sections from samples taken from wells, to measurements made on outcrop analogues that are exposed elsewhere on the planet. This presentation will touch on the primary differences between different types of aquifers and reservoirs in Michigan and the rest of the Great Lakes area, but will also include the Paradox Basin in the western U.S. The exposures in that area are world-class, and the formations cropping out in the basin are active oil and gas reservoirs or important sources of groundwater in neighboring states.
