October Luncheon Meeting

VIRTUAL: Virtual Meetings are now free on the MicrosoftTeams platform. Use the following link to register for the virtual meeting. Virtual Registration

Please RSVP by 3:00pm on Friday, October 14, 2022.

Reservations made after the deadline will incur an additional fee of $10.

*Please note, Carolina Mayorga will be presenting In-Person*

IN-PERSON LOCATION: Luncheon meeting will be held at Ranchland Hills Golf Club. 

TOPIC: Geochemical Characterization of the Bone Spring Formation, Delaware Basin, Using Chemostratigraphy and Integrated Petrophysics

ABSTRACT: The Delaware Basin forms part of West Texas's and New Mexico’s famous  petroleum-generating Permian Basin. The Bone Spring Formation is a  prolific hydrocarbon producer within this basin, creating one of the  world’s richest oil shales. This formation has lithological  sequences that are characterized by repeating carbonate and  siliciclastic intervals of a third-order cycle which can largely be  correlated to highstand and lowstand systems tracts, respectively.  Lithological complexity and facies change are manifested by debris  flows, turbidites, and slumps. In addition to glacio-eustasy, both  tectonism and broader Milankovitch cycles have influenced the  depositional history.

Previous investigations have utilized cores and wireline logs to  provide high-resolution chemo-facies segregation, which can be  correlated with reservoir and rock properties; however, core and  wireline logs are sporadically collected, whereas drill cuttings  are available from most wells. For this study, XRF elemental data  derived from drill cuttings collected at 30 – 60ft (9 – 18m) intervals  have been compared to wireline well logs. XRF measurements were  categorized using hierarchical cluster and principal component  analysis based on chemical facies. Chemostratigraphic units and  packages were applied to generate cross-sections and facies maps to  understand depositional cyclicity, terrigenous influence, grain size,  mineralogy,  organic content, and rock property distribution. These data sets can be  used to high-grade acreage for resource identification and storage to  optimize drilling performance, completion designs and as a geosteering  input.

BIO: Ligia Carolina Mayorga-Gonzalez is a Ph.D. from Colorado School of Mines, working on a High-resolution Reservoir Characterization of the Lewis Shale using elemental, well log, and core data. She obtained her degree in May 2022. She graduated with her undergraduate degree in geology from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogota. She then pursued a master’s degree at the University of Oklahoma. She worked for two years as a reservoir geologist at Morningstar Partners focusing on the Lewis Shale formation in Wyoming. Currently, she works as a geoscientist technical advisor with Diversified Well Logging, working on the Wolcamp, Avalon, and Eagle ford among other formations.