Speaker: Brian Casey, Ph.D.
Senior Geologic Modeler
Bureau of Economic Geology

The 2021 Delaware Basin Geologic Model project provides a 3D geo-cellular model interpretation for the Delaware Basin, unconventional reservoir system of the late Pennsylvanian, Wolfcampian and Leonardian. The project was constructed by:
• Subdividing the Bone Spring and Wolfcamp formations into major zones, and by mapping the basin and slope facies within these zones to their depositional limits against the shelf edge.
• Updating major faults that were active within the Wolfcamp formation.
• Adding petrophysical analyses from across the entire basin region. Changes in salinity were incorporated and key reservoir and geomechanical properties were interpreted. Pressure data was provided as input for hydrocarbon storage estimation.
Don’t miss this installment of the Bureau Seminar Series. Open the
attached calendar invite and save it to your schedule.

• Correlating formation volume factors to API gravity, GOR and reservoir pressure, so that hydrocarbon-in-place could be distributed across the entire basin and Bone Spring - Wolfcamp stratigraphic column.
• Selecting a 3D geo-cellular grid size that is sufficiently fine to capture significant facies, petrophysical, and hydrocarbon variations between well control points, and yet coarse enough for model simulations to run within a day to a few hours.
• Conducting variogram analyses so that geostatistical Gaussian simulations could be run on all properties.
• Generating multiple realizations on the properties needed for hydrocarbon volume estimation so that uncertainty could be evaluated.