Hardcover plus Foldouts

Sedimentology and stratigraphy are neighbors yet distinctly separate entities within the earth sciences. Sedimentology searches for the common traits of sedimentary rocks regardless of age as it reconstructs environments and processes of deposition and erosion from the sediment record. Stratigraphy, by contrast, concentrates on changes with time, on measuring time and correlating coeval events. Sequence stratigraphy straddles the boundary between the two fields. This book, dedicated to carbonate rocks, approaches sequence stratigraphy from its sedimentologic background. This book attempts to communicate by combining different specialities and different lines of reasoning, and by searching for principles underlying the bewildering diversity of carbonate rocks. It provides enough general background, in introductory chapters and appendices, to be easily digestible for sedimentologists and stratigraphers as well as earth scientists at large.

Reservoir management is an important topic in the oil industry today. Conferences, forums, short courses, and technical papers, written and attended by engineers, geologists, geophysicists, petrophysicists, and managers discuss various aspects of reservoir management. A critical component of reservoir management is the accurate characterization of the hydrocarbon asset, called reservoir characterization. The topic of this course is the process of sequence-stratigraphic interpretation and characterization of carbonate reservoirs. Because of the overwhelming mass of information most reservoir geoscientists keep up with either some aspects of sequence-stratigraphy, or some aspects of reservoir characterization, but typically not both. The authors believe that the two disciplines are so intimately related that the sequence framework should be considered a critical piece of the integrated puzzle.

In recent years there has been a virtual explosion of stratigraphic studies utilizing the principles of sequence stratigraphy. Although the concept of time stratigraphy is not new, the packaging of depositional units into systems tracts and sequences is. This new approach has led to the reassessment of areas that in some cases have been the subject of intense geological scrutiny for decades. The fundamental principles upon which sequence stratigraphy is based are applicable at a broad range of temporal and physical scales. This volume arises from several sessions on sequence stratigraphy held at the Thirteenth International Sedimentological Congress, with emphasis on facies associations within a sequence stratigraphic framework.

The 2nd Edition of Carbonate Reservoirs aims to educate graduate students and industry professionals on the complexities of porosity evolution in carbonate reservoirs. In the intervening 12 years since the first edition, there have been numerous studies of value published that need to be recognized and incorporated in the topics discussed. A chapter on the impact of global tectonics and biological evolution on the carbonate system has been added to emphasize the effects of global earth processes and the changing nature of life on earth through Phanerozoic time on all aspects of the carbonate system. The centerpiece of this chapter—and easily the most important synthesis of carbonate concepts developed since the 2001 edition—is the discussion of the CATT hypothesis, an integrated global database bringing together stratigraphy, tectonics, global climate, oceanic geochemistry, carbonate platform characteristics, and biologic evolution in a common time framework. Another new chapter concerns naturally fractured carbonates, a subject of increasing importance, given recent technological developments in 3D seismic, reservoir modeling, and reservoir production techniques. - Detailed porosity classifications schemes for easy comparison - Overview of the carbonate sedimentologic system - Case studies to blend theory and practice