Consultancy
I am engaged as carbonate consultant in projects for the oil industry providing custom-tailored training courses and seminars. These combine unique field and experimental datasets aimed at improve the know-how of the ‘Pre-salt’ non-skeletal carbonate-silica plays.
I have experience analysing and integrating outcrop, borehole (cuttings, cores, wireline logs), and thin-section information from marine and freshwater carbonate sequences (Middle Triassic of the Catalan Basin; Cretaceous of the Tremp Basin; Carboniferous of Scotland; Pleistocene and Holocene of USA, Australia, Italy).
I am currently running two field trips for geology students and geoscience specialists covering different aspects of microbial carbonate geology (sedimentology, petrology and gechemistry), and a classroom workshop on continental carbonates to refine our understanding of the Pre-salt carbonate factories and its application to hydrocarbon reservoir exploration:
WORKSHOP 1 # CONTINENTAL CARBONATES: APPLICATIONS FOR THE SOUTH ATLANTIC PRE-SALT DEPOSITS
Continental carbonates are extremely heterogeneous deposits that can accumulate in a large spectrum of depositional settings from freshwater, alkaline and saline lakes, freshwater palustrine, fluvial and calcrete environments, or sublacustrine to subaerial thermal springs.
During the first part of the workshop we will provide with the basic knowledge to understand continental carbonate environments, including facies, textures, geochemistry and the depositional processes controlling their occurrence and diversity.
In the second part, we will critically review the lessons learned from outcrop analogues, experimental datasets and numerical models to offer an integrated process-product perspective of the Pre-Salt non-marine reservoirs from offshore Brazil and West Africa.
In this workshop, we will:
– Review the physical, chemical and biological processes involved in continental carbonate precipitation and deposition in calcareous springs, hot-springs, lacustrine, palustrine and pedogenic environments
– Review the controls on facies, mineralogy, crystal morphology and sedimentary architecture of continental carbonates based on updated literature (outcrop, thin- section, geochemical, SEM data)
– Analyse selected outcrop case studies, and experimental, geochemical, and numerical data to provide with a refined framework to understand the Pre-Salt carbonate occurrences of the South Atlantic margins
FIELD-TRIP 1 # ARCHITECTURE AND BASIN EVOLUTION OF FAULT-BLOCK MICROBIAL-DOMINATED CARBONATE RAMPS (TRIASSIC, CATALAN BASIN, SPAIN): AN OUTCROP ANALOGUE FOR PRE-SALT OCCURRENCES
This field-trip is focused to gain insights on the facies architecture from marine carbonate systems dominated by microbial factories with examples from the Middle Triassic of the Catalan Basin (Spain). Special emphasis is given to the recognition of the facies heterogeneities and typical stacking patterns seen in carbonate ramp settings dominated by well-preserved, metre to seismic-scale stromatolitic to thombolitic deposits.
In this field-trip, attendees will learn more about the controls driving microbial carbonate occurrence across inner to outer ramp environments. They will have the opportunity to recognise outcrop to seismic-scale sedimentary geometries and stratal terminations, along with a wide array of depositional facies and sequence stratigraphic surfaces relevant to carbonate systems in rift tectonic settings.
FIELD-TRIP 2 # AN OUTCROP ANALOGUE FOR SPHERULITIC CARBONATES FORMED IN ALKALINE, VOLCANIC LAKES (CARBONIFEROUS, SCOTLAND): DEPOSITIONAL ARCHITECTURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CARBONATE ALLOCHEMS
This second field-trip is focused on the recognition of the facies heterogeneities seen in shallow hyper-alkaline lacustrine and volcanic settings dominated by ‘non-skeletal’ carbonate factories. The field-trip takes place in the East Kirkton Limestone Quarry (Bathgate, Scotland) which is made up of a Carboniferous sedimentary succession of spherule-rich carbonate allochems formed in a volcanic and clay-poor alkaline lake setting.
This location represents an unrivalled outcrop analogue for the Cretaceous South Atlantic Presalt subsurface occurrences (Brazil and Angola), as allows to explore how these unusual carbonate settings looks like in outcrop. In this field-trip we will integrate outcrop, thin-section, geochemical and experimental data to better understand the origin and predict the occurrence of the analogous Presalt spherulitic carbonates within lacustrine successions.
In addition, we will review the current hydrogeochemical models put forward for the Presalt lakes critically evaluating the mechanisms considered by the different Schools of Thought to explain mineral paragenesis and carbonate textural variability. The effects of evaporation, CO2 magmatic input, mixing of waters, and leackage to underlying aquifers (or adjacent water bodies) will be evaluated in a basin-scale context. Thus, we aim at quantify the impacts that lake bathymetry, atmospheric CO2 pressure and water composition variations have in the mineral precipitation, facies distributions and cyclothem arrangement.
