Abstract
Facies bodies in geostatistical models of deep-water depositional environments generally represent channel-levee-overbank-lobe morphologies. Such models adequately capture one set of the erosional and depositional processes resulting from turbidity currents traveling downslope to the ocean basin floor. However, depositional morphologies diverge from the straight forward channel-levee-overbank-lobe paradigm when the topography of the slope or the shape of the basin impacts the timing and magnitude of turbidity current deposition. Subaqueous mass-transport-deposits (MTDs) present the need for an exception to the channel-levee-overbank-lobe archetype. Irregular surface topography of subaqueous MTDs can play a primary role in controlling sand deposition from turbidity currents. MTD topography creates mini-basins in which sand accumulates in irregularly-shaped deposits. These accumulations are difficult to laterally correlate using well-log data due to their variable and unpredictable shape and size. Prediction is further complicated because sandstone bodies typical of this setting are difficult to resolve in seismic-reflection data. An event-based model is presented, called DFTopoSim, which simulates debris flows and turbidity currents. The accommodation space on top of and between debris flow lobes is filled in by sand from turbidity currents. When applied to a subsurface case in the Molasse Basin of Upper Austria, DFTopoSim predicts sand packages consistent with observations from core, well, and seismic data and the interpretation of the sedimentologic processes. DFTopoSim expands the set of available geostatistical deep-water depositional models beyond the standard channel-levee-overbank-lobe model.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Dr. Craig Dietrich for donating extensive time to a thorough edit of this paper. Also, we would like to thank Rohöl-Aufsuchungs A.G. (RAG) for financial and logistical support of our research, as well as for permission to publish their data in this study. In particular, we wish to thank Richard Derksen for his ongoing support of this research. This work has benefited greatly from discussion on petroleum geology and sedimentology with Stephan Graham, Donald Lowe, and Stephen Hubbard, rock physics and seismic data interpretation with Tapan Mukerji and Gary Mavko, and geostatistical modeling with Andre Journel. We also acknowledge generous software donations from Schlumberger (Petrel) and the inversion models produced by HOT Engineering in 2007 using Hampson-Russel. Finally, valuable feedback and support has been provided by the Stanford Project on Deepwater Depositional Systems (SPODDS), an industrial affiliates program whose members include Aera Energy, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, BHP Billiton, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Hess Corporation, Marathon Oil Company, Nexen Energy, Occidental Petroleum, Petrobras, Reliance Industries Ltd., Rohöl-Aufsuchungs A.G. (RAG), Schlumberger, and Shell.
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Stright, L., Bernhardt, A. & Boucher, A. DFTopoSim: Modeling Topographically-Controlled Deposition of Subseismic Scale Sandstone Packages Within a Mass Transport Dominated Deep-Water Channel Belt. Math Geosci 45, 277–296 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11004-013-9444-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11004-013-9444-7