The Energy Minerals Division is excited to present its technical program and luncheon for the AAPG Annual Convention in Long Beach, Calif., April 1-4.
EMD has a strong technical program this year, covering a variety of unconventional energy topics of current interest to both EMD and AAPG members. EMD-sponsored oral and poster sessions include:
♦Shale Gas – Co-chaired by Dan Jarvie and Bill Coffey, oral and poster sessions will feature shale gas plays in the United States and Canada.
The oral session includes the Appalachian Basin (Marcellus and Utica shales), Barnett Shale in the Fort Worth Basin, Gulf Coast and Mid-continent shales, Cretaceous shales in the U.S. Rockies and the Triassic Doig and Montney shales in British Columbia, Canada. The session will open with discussion of gas supplies from unconventional resources and factors affecting flow rates.
The poster session is equally well rounded, with additional details on the Barnett Shale as well as the Woodford, Floyd, Utica, Marcellus and Mancos shales. It also will include discussion of tight gas shale evaluation and exploration paradigms.
♦Heavy Oil Provinces of the World (Canada, Venezuela, California) – Frances J. Hein and Alan Reed are co-chairs for oral and poster sessions that examine the geology of heavy oil and oil-sand deposits. Heavy oil and oil-sand deposits are becoming attractive unconventional energy sources as the price of conventional oil continues to rise and as improved technologies reduce their recovery and production costs.
Over three-quarters of the world’s heavy oil and oil-sand reserves occur in Venezuela and Canada, with at least 1.8 trillion barrels in the Orinoco heavy oil belt and 1.7 trillion barrels in Athabasca oil sands. This compares to an estimated 1.75 trillion barrels of conventional oil, mainly located in the Middle East.
There will be four oil-sand papers from the Alberta Basin and one from Utah. Heavy oil deposits presented include the Orinoco heavy oil belt and Lake Maracaibo, as well as California; the Llanos Basin in Colombia; and the North Sea graben offshore Norway and Britain.
♦Alternative Energy Sources: Promises and Pitfalls (co-sponsored with the Astrogeology Committee) – Co-chaired by Harrison H. Schmitt and William A. Ambrose, this session will explore the wide variety of alternative-energy sources that will be needed to satisfy the world’s energy demand as it moves from hydrocarbon-based resources to alternative resources in the 21st century.
The program will cover fuel cell technology, biofuels and geothermal energy, as well as more exotic potential sources of energy such as helium-3 on the moon. They will be compared and contrasted with unconventional, hydrocarbon-based energy sources such as gas hydrates, shale gas and heavy oil, which can be developed in the near-term as a bridge to these alternative-energy sources.
♦Coal: Energy Source, CO Sink, Paleoenvironmental Archive – Co-chairs Walter B. Ayers Jr. and Jack C. Pashin host this poster session, which reports results of selected domestic and international studies of coal and coalbed gas resources, enhanced coalbed gas recovery and CO sequestration in coal beds.
As conventional oil and gas reserves are depleted, the world’s abundant coal resources and unconventional gas supplies, including coalbed methane, will assume increasingly important roles in meeting future hydrocarbon demands. This session focuses on characteristics of coal and coalbed gas resources, prospects for enhanced coalbed gas recovery and the potential of coals for geologic sequestration of CO.
We encourage all AAPG members to discover the “unconventional” aspects of EMD – and look forward to seeing you at the EMD sessions in Long Beach.