OUTCROP Newsletter of the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists
Volume 68 • No. 11 • November 2019
The Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists
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Vol. 68, No. 11 | www.rmag.org
OUTCROP The Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists
1999 Broadway • Suite 730 • Denver, CO 80202 • 800-970-7624 The Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists (RMAG) is a nonprofit organization whose purposes are to promote interest in geology and allied sciences and their practical application, to foster scientific research and to encourage fellowship and cooperation among its members. The Outcrop is a monthly publication of the RMAG.
2019 OFFICERS AND BOARD OF DIRECTORS PRESIDENT
2st VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT
Tom Sperr tsperr@bayless-cos.com
Dan Bassett dbassett@sm-energy.com
PRESIDENT-ELECT
TREASURER
Jane Estes-Jackson janeestesjackson@gmail.com
Eryn Bergin eryn.bergin@aec-denver.com
1st VICE PRESIDENT
TREASURER-ELECT
Heather LaReau heatherthegeologist@gmail.com
Chris Eisinger chris.eisinger@state.co.us
1st VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT
SECRETARY
Ben Burke bburke@hpres.com
Anna Phelps aphelps@sm-energy.com
2nd VICE PRESIDENT
COUNSELOR
Sophie Berglund sberglund@raisaenergy.com
Donna Anderson danderso@rmi.net
RMAG STAFF DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS
Kathy Mitchell-Garton kmitchellgarton@rmag.org DIRECTOR OF MEMBER SERVICES
Debby Watkins dwatkins@rmag.org CO-EDITORS
Courtney Beck Courtney.Beck@halliburton.com Jesse Melick jesse.melick@bpx.com Wylie Walker wylie.walker@gmail.com DESIGN/LAYOUT
Nate Silva nate@nate-silva.com
ADVERTISING INFORMATION
Rates and sizes can be found on page 47. Advertising rates apply to either black and white or color ads. Submit color ads in RGB color to be compatible with web format. Borders are recommended for advertisements that comprise less than one half page. Digital files must be PC compatible submitted in png, jpg, tif, pdf or eps formats at a minimum of 300 dpi. If you have any questions, please call the RMAG office at 800-970-7624. Ad copy, signed contract and payment must be received before advertising insertion. Contact the RMAG office for details. DEADLINES: Ad submissions are the 1st of every month for the following month’s publication.
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RMAG Office: 800-970-7624 Fax: 323-352-0046 staff@rmag.org or www.rmag.org
The Outcrop is a monthly publication of the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists
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Outcrop | November 2019 OUTCROP
RMAG/DWLS
FALL SYMPOSIUM
Thanks to our Sponsors
And Exhibitors
Thanks to all who attended! OUTCROP | NovemberRMAG 2019
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Vol. 68, No. 11 | www.rmag.org
OUTCROP Newsletter of the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists
CONTENTS FEATURES
DEPARTMENTS
12 Lead Story: A Shift in Space– An Update to North American Coordinate Systems
6 RMAG October 2019 Board of Directors Meeting
26 RMAG On the Rocks: Hiking on the Hygiene Sandstone Type Section 32 2019 RMAG Award Recipients 42 Highlights of the RMAG DWLS 2019 Fall Symposium
ASSOCIATION NEWS 2 RMAG Summit Sponsors 4 RMAG/DWLS Fall Symposium sponsors 7 RMAG Rockbuster’s Bash 38 2019 RMAG Foundation Scholarship Winners
10 President’s Letter 20 RMAG Luncheon programs: Maxwell Pommer 22 RMAG Luncheon programs: Ben Burke, PhD 40 The RMAG Foundation in 2019
COVER PHOTO
46 In The Pipeline
Colorado fall colors near Kenosha Pass Credit: Courtney Beck
47 Welcome New RMAG members! 47 Outcrop Advertising Rates 48 2019 Outcrop Cover Photo Competition 49 Advertiser Index 49 Calendar
39 2019 Neal J. Harr Memorial Award Winners
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RMAG OCTOBER 2019 BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING By Anna Phelps, Secretary aphelps@sm-energy.com
Luncheon speakers lined up through May of 2020. The Committee assessing the feasibility of organizing a Data Science Symposium for 2020. The Membership Committee is working on wrapping up the 2019 Mentorship Program and will be advertising the 2020 Mentorship Program soon. The Committee is putting together a Membership Survey for the entire membership, so keep an eye out for that digital survey in your email by the end of the year. Debby reported that the Sporting Clay Tournament was rescheduled to November 1, due to the fall snow storm that hit the Denver Metro Area on the planned day of the tournament. The Publications Committee reported that the October issue of the Mountain Geologist is in layout and there
Happy fall y’all! The leaves are falling, the elk are bugling, and the wood stove is smoking. Grab a warm (pumpkin spice) drink and brush those leaves off the outcrop while you can, as snow is quickly covering up the high mountain rocks. It’s nearly time to hunker down, dive into those geology books, ogle at hand samples, and start daydreaming about the next field season. Stay warm out there! The October meeting of the RMAG Board of Directors was held on October 16, 2019 at 4:00 PM. All board members were present. Treasurer Eryn Bergin reported that the Financial Committee has started working on the budget for 2020, which will be finalized and voted on by the Board in December. The Continuing Education Committee has
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ROCKY MOUNTAIN ASSOCIATION OF GEOLOGISTS
Rockbuster's Bash
AWARDS CELEBRATION & DINNER November 13, 2019 | 5pm-9pm ChopHouse Denver | 1735 19th Street
Dinner & Dessert Cash Bar Live Auction
Register at www.rmag.org
Vol. 68, No. 11 | www.rmag.org
email: staff@rmag.org phone: 800.970.7624 1999 Broadway, Suite 730, Denver CO 80202
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fax: 323.352.0046 www.rmag.org
BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING
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are papers in review and in the queue for 2020. The Outcrop lead articles are planned for the rest of 2019 and the Committee is working on articles for 2020. The Committee also reported that starting in November, the RMAG Foundation will have a monthly column in the Outcrop. The On the Rocks Committee wrapped up their 2019 field trip season with a full group on the Hygiene Sandstone trip in Boulder County. The Committee is working on planning field trips and putting together a budget for 2020. The Educational Outreach Committee has several new members and is working on making contacts at Denver area schools. Jeff May recently lead a fieldtrip for Little High School students, which was a big hit! Ever wonder exactly what happened immediately following the Chicxulub impact that is famously responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs? The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP)–International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) Expedition 364 recently recovered a core from the Chicxulub peak ring which provides insights into the first few minutes and hours after impact. The core shows evidence for the peak ring formed in basement rock within minutes, within 10 minutes, the ring was covered in thick breccia, and within a day a tsunami deposited distant materials in the crater. There is also evidence for fires and sulfate aerosols being released into the atmosphere, which would have contributed to global cooling and darkness after the impact and are hypothesized to be important extinction mechanisms. Source: Sean P. S. Gulick, Timothy J. Bralower, Jens Ormöd, Brendon Hall, Kliti Grice, Bettina Schaefer, Shelby Lyons, Katherine H. Freeman, Joanna V. Morgan, Natalia Artemieva, Pim Kaskes, Sietze J. de Graaff, Michael T. Whalen, Gareth S. Collins, Sonia M. Tikoo, Christina Verhagen, Gail L. Christeson, Philippe Claeys, Marco J. L. Coolen, Steven Goderis, Kazuhisa Goto, Richard A. F. Grieve, Naoma McCall, Gordon R. Osinski, Auriol S. P. Rae , Ulrich Riller, Jan Smit, Vivi Vajda, Axel Wittmann, and the Expedition 364 Scientists. (2019) The first day of the Cenozoic, PNAS, vol. 116, no. 39, 19342–19351. DOI: 10.1073/ pnas.1909479116. OUTCROP | November 2019
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Fall PTTC Workshops Oil and Gas Property Valuation
Tuesday, November 12, 2019 Location: Colorado School of Mines, Student Center Ballroom C Fee: $250, includes snacks, class notes, and PDH certificate Instructor: Nicholas Kernan, US Dept of Interior
The valuation of oil and gas properties has rapidly developed into one of the most important skills within the energy sector. This course aims to introduce individuals to a basic workflow that will allow them to take raw data and develop an opinion of value for oil and gas acreage. The focus will be on-shore U.S. unconventional resources. Valuations will be considered from both the standpoint of operators and royalty owners. Topics to be discussed are: the role of geology in valuations, forecasting production, commodity prices, development plans, defining risk, quantifying uncertainty, and the construction of discounted cash flows. All of these topics could be a course in their own right and this workshop does not aim to make participants experts in any one of the above topics. Rather, it aims to bring all these concepts together in a practical workflow, providing the participant guidance for future investigation. It should also help give technical experts context of how their day-to-day work affects business decisions. This is an introductory class and is not meant for individuals that are already familiar with oil and gas property valuation. The class encourages participants to bring their own computer, as some of the exercises will involve building simple cash flows in Excel.
Permian Basin Core Workshop: Grayburg, San Andres and Clear Fork Fms.
Tuesday, December 17, 2019 Location: Colorado School of Mines, Berthoud Hall Rm 243 Fee: $250, includes snacks, class notes, and PDH certificate Instructor: Robert F. Lindsay; Lindsay Consulting & Brigham Young University
The Permian Basin has experienced a revolution in hydrocarbon production and is the most prolific and profitable basin in North America. The basin contains: 1) conventional highly productive carbonate and siliciclastic reservoirs along the Northwest Shelf, Eastern Shelf, Central Basin Platform, and Horseshoe Atoll; and 2) unconventional highly productive siliceous shale reservoirs in the Midland and Delaware Basins. Unconventional reservoirs have gained the spot light, but come with a high price tag to lease acreage, drill, and complete horizontal wells. Conventional reservoirs offer lower cost exploration/development–re-development/partnering opportunities, including horizontal wells. Cumulative production from 1920’s-2000 was 29 BBO from conventional reservoirs and from 2001-2017 rose to 39 BBO from a mixture of conventional and unconventional reservoirs. This core workshop will focus on “classic” conventional Permian Basin reservoirs. Cores to be presented are from the following stratigraphic intervals: Grayburg Formation (second largest conventional production) San Andres Formation (largest conventional production) Clear Fork Formation (highly heterogeneous conventional reservoir) Grayburg core will be from a highly productive conventional reservoir, tied to a reservoir scale sequence stratigraphic model and contains a down-dip residual oil zone (ROZ). San Andres core will be from a highly productive conventional reservoir where a CO2 pilot was conducted. An additional San Andres core will be from a completely cored underlying ROZ. A fourth core will be from a highly heterogeneous Clear Fork conventional reservoir along the Northwest Shelf. Some Clear Fork reservoirs are plagued by migration of dolomite fines. Class Descriptions and Register Online: www.pttcrockies.org
For more information, contact Mary Carr, 303.273.3107, mcarr@mines.edu 9 OUTCROP | November 2019
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PRESIDENT’S LETTER By Tom Sperr
Field Camp
Prior to going to field camp, most of my experience with the American west was watching Bonanza or the Lone Ranger. I am not old enough to remember the Lone Ranger from radio, but I sure liked the television show. My father was from Michigan and as a kid he listened to the ‘Ranger’ on radio station WXYZ from Detroit. The ‘Ranger’ originated in Detroit. My dad was from Monroe, Michigan, the proud home of General Custer. My family had deep western roots. The summer of my junior year of college at Akron, like many of you, was the time to take our geology field camp. Dean, fellow geology major, and my partner in crime at Akron, and I packed my parents ’67 Ford station wagon with our camping gear, a large beer cooler and headed for Casper, Wyoming, at the end of spring quarter. We picked up a third guy from Cleveland State that was attending our field camp. Joe was good company, but more importantly provided much needed gas money. I had heard of Casper for years, but not having been west of the Mississippi before, I had no
idea what Casper would be like. I was shocked when we drove into town. For one thing, it was small. Coming from the Akron-Cleveland area, Casper would have barely been a suburb in Ohio. It might have been one of the consolidated high schools we played in football. It was dry, brown, dusty and windy-well you all know it. I loved it. Friends have told me of their difficulties with their traveling field camps. We lived in the lap of luxury at Casper College for five weeks. Staying in the dorms, we were fed breakfast and dinner in the college canteen and provided with sack lunches each day. Frankly, the food wasn’t bad, but I did get tired of jello salad. Casper College was also conveniently located near downtown Casper’s many watering holes. Our favorite was the Wonderbar, home of live music and nickel beer on Tuesday nights. (Sadly, the Wonderbar is currently closed. There is an opportunity for a rich oil person to reopen an historic Casper landmark.) The toughest bar in town was in the Townsend Hotel; the Tomahawk Room. Dean and I looked in one
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night and decided we were not ready for that scene. But just outside of the doorway we found a broken pool cue which we proudly brought back to the dorm as a souvenir of our big night out. We were obviously the toughest guys in field camp. Our first field problem was west of Casper mapping the Immigrant Gap Anticline. Immigrant Gap is the living definition of a ‘sheepherders’ anticline, being nearly symmetrical and perfectly exposing the Cody down through the Sundance in its center. We spent two weeks there learning to map, measuring fractures and looking for fossils. As I had a station wagon that could haul eight, our professors asked me to drive from campus to the Gap, and even paid for gas. Dean and I saw this as a wonderful opportunity. At the gate where we parked every morning, was a clean running irrigation ditch and we were soon caching beer there and swimming at the end of a hot day on the outcrop. Our last week in camp was spent in Yellowstone, more as tourists than as geologists. Dean, Joe and I drove straight through from Yellowstone back to Ohio. We had pooled the last of our money for gas which was held in an envelope in the glove compartment. Most of our remaining money had gone for six cases of Coors, a rarity at the time in Ohio and a sure sign of a cool guy that had been west. Coors was so cool that we built a pyramid of empties in our apartment when the beer was gone. We hit a skunk sometime in the night crossing the Dakotas and the aroma accompanied us through the rest of the drive. We arrived in Cleveland to drop off Joe and were so low on gas, and so short on money, that we had to borrow $10 from Joe’s folks to get back to Akron. Hi-Yo Silver, I was determined to get back out west. Vol. 68, No. 11 | www.rmag.org
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LEAD STORY
An Update to North American Coordinate Systems By Jan Van Sickle, Principal Technical Program Manager at HERE Technologies
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WHY?
“If you do geospatial work in the USA and you work in the National Spatial Reference System, every product you’ve ever made, every survey, every map, every lidar point cloud, every image, every DEM WILL have the wrong coordinates on it in 4 years.” So said Dru Smith in a Pittsburgh briefing a couple of months ago. (Source: Smith, Dru. “NSRS Modernization.” presented at Briefing for USACE Surveying Community of Practice Meeting, Pittsburgh, PA, May 19, 2019.) Dru is the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS) modernization manager at the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) and he is referring to the replacement of the North American Datum 1983 (NAD83), the North American Vertical Datum 1988 (NAVD88), and others. Specifically, NAD83 will be replaced with 4 new semi-dynamic plate fixed terrestrial reference frames; North American Terrestrial Reference Frame (NATRF2022), Pacific Terrestrial Reference Frame (PATRF2022), Caribbean Terrestrial Reference Frame (CATRF2022), and Mariana Terrestrial Reference Frame (MATRF2022). The North American-Pacific Geopotential Datum of 2022 (NAPGD2022) will replace NAVD88, 6 other vertical datums, 1 gravity datum, several gravimetric geoids, several hybrid geoids, and vertical deflection models.
The current North American Datum is not geocentric; that is, it is not oriented to the center of mass of the Earth. This is a problem for a couple of reasons. First, it means that positions in NAD83 systematically diverge from the same positions in the primary geocentric global reference frames: International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF2014), International GNSS Service (IGS08) and WGS84 (G1762). This discrepancy is a consequence of a shortcoming in the readjustment and redefinition that gave us NAD83 more than 30 years ago. It involved 1.7 million weighted surveying observations including 30,000 EDM-measured baselines, 5,000 astronomic azimuths and more. Since about 655 Doppler stations positioned by the TRANSIT satellite system and about 112 Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) vectors were involved, it can be said that NAD83 was the first civilian coordinate system established with space-based measurements, but little if any data GPS data was used in the process. So while the original objective was to orient NAD83 to the geocenter, in the end it missed
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LEAD STORY
FIGURE 1: Horizontal change in coordinates switching from NAD83 to NATRF2022. (Source: Stone, William. “Keeping Up with the Crust … and Technology (Replacing NAD83 & NAVD88)” presented New Mexico Professional Surveyors’ Annual Conference, Santa Fe, NM Santa Fe, NM, April 12, 2019. https://www.ngs. noaa.gov/web/science_edu/presentations_library/)
the mark by ~2.2 meters (~7 ft.). This discontinuity can result in up two meters of error in parts of the continental United States (CONUS) and up to four meters in Hawaii. Second, in the interim the dominant worldwide positioning utility has become the Global Navigational Satellite Systems (GNSS), which includes GPS. Those constellations orbit with the center of mass of the Earth at one focus of their elliptical paths. It follows that the datum to which such positioning is referenced works best when it is geocentric as well. While the global reference frames are spot on in this regard, NAD83 is not. However, in 2022, the new semi-dynamic terrestrial reference frames will be geocentric and, in a sense, we will join the rest of the world. The original realization of NAVD88 rolled out in 1991 included conventional differential level work and the establishment of elevations (orthometric heights)
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on huge number of permanent monuments known as passive benchmarks. However, today both horizontal and vertical positions are determined in an integrated fashion by GPS/GNSS. There is a bit of a complication there because calculating elevations like those determined by leveling from GPS/GNSS ellipsoidal heights requires a model of Earth’s gravity, a geoid. Fortunately, there have been substantial advances in the measurements from which such a model is determined, i.e. Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE), etc. However, these more accurate models revealed that NAVD88 has about a half meter bias and a one meter tilt across the contiguous United States. One goal of the upcoming replacement is to eliminate these systematic errors in 2022.
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LEAD STORY
FIGURE 2: Vertical shift in orthometric heights from NVD88 to NAPGD2022 in the continental US
(Source: Roman, Dan “NSRS Modernization Overview: Blueprint Part 2: Geopotential Coordinates.” presented at 2019 NGS Geospatial Summit, Silver Spring, MD, May 6, 2019, https://www.ngs.noaa.gov/web/science_edu/presentations_library/)
achieving that: (1) collecting airborne gravity to capture a snapshot of gravity for the United States and its holdings from which an accurate geoid model at a specific instant of time, an epoch, can be built and (2) monitoring the changes to the geoid over time using a combination of satellite and terrestrial measurements and geophysical modeling. These components will equip NGS to create the high accuracy unconstrained gravimetric geoid model that can support time-dependent orthometric and dynamic heights when combined with the ~2000 point Continuously Operating Reference (CORS) locations. In other words, not only will the geoid be modeled, but changes in that model will be monitored via a Geoid Monitoring Service (GeMS). While the mass quantity in the Earth is effectively constant the mass distributions are time dependent. In short, gravity changes and as it does orthometric and dynamic heights change. Obviously, a datum based on a static gravity model cannot account for that, but
»»CONTINUED FROM PAGE 14 THE CHANGES Here are just a few of the many coming changes. In the continental United States, the horizontal shift from NAD83 to NATRF2022 will vary from approximately 0.7m in the southeast to over 2.5m along the west coast (Figure 1), and illustrating the tilt, the vertical shift in orthometric heights from NAVD88 to NAPGD2022 will likely vary from nearly 0.0m in the southeast to approximately -1.3m in the northwest (Figure 2). The vertical variance in Alaska will be from approximately -0.4m in the Aleutians to -1.7m in northeast Alaska (Figure 3). However, it is important to keep in mind these figures are not static.
VERTICAL MOVEMENT
The overall target of The Gravity for the Redefinition of the American Vertical Datum (GRAV-D) project is 2 cm accuracy in orthometric heights from GNSS and a geoid model. There are two steps for Vol. 68, No. 11 | www.rmag.org
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LEAD STORY
FIGURE 3: Vertical shift in orthometric heights from NVD88 to NAPGD2022 in Alaska
(Source: Roman, Dan “NSRS Modernization Overview: Blueprint Part 2: Geopotential Coordinates.”, presented at 2019 NGS Geospatial Summit, Silver Spring, MD, May 6, 2019 https://www.ngs.noaa.gov/web/science_edu/ presentations_library/)
and NGS to hold the official published coordinates static and unchanging until NGS had enough data to warrant an update. The reality was, of course, that the points to which the coordinates were assigned were always moving with their tectonic plates (Figure 4). At the same time the capability of measurement technology to detect, for example, the 1-3 centimeters-per-year counterclockwise rotation of the North American plate eventually brought the need to deal with such movement from desirable to necessary. The approach of choosing an epoch, a moment in time, and serving up the NSRS as a set of coordinates on points at that epoch was made manifest seven years ago when the realization that was a snapshot defined at midnight on January 1, 2010 as NAD83 2011 epoch 2010.0. In fact, beginning in 2020.0 NGS intends to continue to estimate NSRS coordinates at reference epochs spaced every five years. However, unlike IGS08, NATRF2022 will be fixed
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the foundation of this new vertical reference frame will be a temporally tracked gravimetric geoid model. Therefore, the gravimetric geoid will be free to be the geopotential surface that best fits Mean Sea Level (MSL) in a least squares sense and while it will be initially set to a specific epoch, that epoch will be update as needed. Clearly such a system cannot be served adequately via passive monuments, the metal discs or rods that have been the physical realization of the NSRS for decades. Instead users will have direct, immediate and accurate access with a GPS/GNSS receiver and the gravimetric model.
HORIZONTAL MOVEMENT
There have been many realizations of NAD83 over the years including NAD83(86), NAD83(HARN/ HPGN), NAD83(CORS96), and NAD83(NSRS2007). In the past, these periodic definitions allowed both users OUTCROP | November 2019
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LEAD STORY
FIGURE 4: Representation of the movement of CORS in the continental United States These estimates will be based on
the velocities of the coordinates in which an arrow of this length a reference frame which is not fixed to any plate, IGS08.
indicates a movement of ~10mm/yr. as measured in
(Source: Roman, Dan “NSRS Modernization Overview: Blueprint Part 1: Geometric Coordinates”, presented at 2019 NGS Geospatial Summit, Silver Spring, MD, May 6, 2019 https://www.ngs.noaa.gov/web/science_edu/presentations_library/)
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to its plate, as will each of the other 3 new terrestrial reference frames, PATRF2022, CATRF2022, and MATRF2022 (Figure 5). Each will be fixed to the plate bearing its name and rotate at its average rate around a 3 parameter Euler pole defined by a latitude, longitude, rotation rate (radian/yr.). This strategy will alleviate the dominant source of time-dependent changes in latitude and longitude. Figure 6 represents the movement of CORS in the contiguous United States once the Euler pole rotation of the North American is removed from the IGS08 velocities. The result will appear semi-stable in the parts of the plate that appear to be rigidly rotating. The residual non-Eulerian horizontal motions and complete ellipsoid height motions will be captured within Intra-Frame Velocity Models (IFVM) of which there will be one for each of the four terrestrial reference frames of the modernized NSRS. They will be used in calculating any point’s position at a specific reference
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epoch such as estimating coordinates on points at the previously mentioned five-year spaced reference epochs, i.e. from 2025.0 to 2030.0, etc.
WORKING IN THE MODERNIZED NSRS
NGS has provided all the details currently available on the policies and procedures that will be implemented in 2022 in The NOAA Technical Report NOS NGS 67, Blueprint for 2022, Part 3 Working in the Modernized NSRS (4/25/2019; https://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PUBS_ LIB/NOAA_TR_NOS_NGS_0067.pdf). This document along with both the NOAA Technical Report NOS NGS 64, Blueprint for 2022, Part 2 Geopotential Coordinates (11/13/2017; https://geodesy.noaa.gov/PUBS_LIB/NOAA_TR_NOS_NGS_0064. pdf) and the NOAA Technical Report NOS NGS 62, Blueprint for 2022, Part 1 Geometric Coordinates (9/21/2017; https://geodesy.noaa.gov/PUBS_LIB/
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LEAD STORY (SBAS). All have expanded and improved at a remarkable pace in recent years. As the accuracy, reliability, not to mention low cost and remarkable speed of GNSS has increased, the urgency to update the NSRS has grown. As a consequence, in 2022 one of the most apparent changes will be GNSS’s role in user’s access to the NSRS. In the past, NGS and its forerunner the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (USC&GS) established, perpetuated and managed over 800,000 substantial physical monuments. Yet they have been vulnerable, as demonstrated by the number disturbed,
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NOAA_TR_NOS_NGS_0062.pdf) provide a comprehensive picture of the many changes that are on the way. The following is a brief explanation of details that might be pertinent. GNSS includes GPS and other global constellations, GLONASS of the Russian Federation, the Galileo system administered by the EU and the Chinese BeiDou Satellite Navigation and Positioning System. It can also be said to include the regional Japanese Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) and the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) along with several ground-based augmentation systems (GBAS) and space-based augmentation systems
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FIGURE 5: Movement
relative to the ITRF08 pole. (Source: Foos, Ray “NATRF 2022 and LDP”, presented at 2017 OTEC, Silver Spring, MD, October 11, 2017 http://www.dot.state. oh.us/engineering/ OTEC/2017Presentations/ 53/Foos_Session%2053-1.pdf)
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FIGURE 6: Movement of CORS in the contiguous United States once the Euler pole rotation of the North American is
removed from the IGS08 velocities. (Source: Roman, Dan “NSRS Modernization Overview: Blueprint Part 1: Geometric Coordinates”, presented at 2019 NGS Geospatial Summit, Silver Spring, MD, May 6, 2019 https://www.ngs.noaa.gov/web/science_edu/presentations_library/)
damaged or destroyed over the years. For example, vertical benchmarks were frequently set along railroads and highways where there were flat continuous pathways for differential levels, but when tracks and lanes are re-constructed or improved, thousands of benchmarks go missing. Horizontal control points are also destroyed or invalidated by regional distortions, crustal movement, earthquakes, isostatic rebound, freezing and thawing, and other forces. Today NGS does not have resources dedicated to check, replace or otherwise maintain passive monuments. Therefore, going forward control will be derived from GNSS measurements referred to the active control positions of the CORS network. While passive control is not necessarily current, active control is reliable and up-to-date thanks to CORS continuous collection of GNSS signals. Passive control cannot alert users when it is not viable, active control can. While you must recover and visit passive control to tie to it, CORS data is available on the internet. In 2022, NGS will
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consider the definitive NSRS coordinates reside with the CORS network. Therefore, both leveling and classical surveying will require GNSS work to be connected to the NSRS via CORS to ensure that the results are up-to-date. Along that line, NGS will expand utilities by which users can process GNSS data. For example, the browser based Online Positioning User Service (OPUS) will be broadened. This OPUS for Everything will be able to handle more types of data including multiple constellation GNSS, Real Time Kinematic (RTK), Real Time Network (RTN), leveling, gravity, classical or continuous data. Finally, the new NSRS will include both the snapshots, a series of fixed epochs for passive marks, and the movie for continuously tracked stations such as CORS and continuously operating relative gravimeters. The modernized NSRS is a step forward toward eliminating the systematic errors in current datums, integrating horizontal and vertical positions and aligning with global reference frames.
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RMAG LUNCHEON PROGRAMS Speaker: Maxwell Pommer | November 6, 2019
Biochemical and Stratigraphic Controls on Pore-System Evolution, Phosphoria Rock Complex (Permian), Rocky Mountain Region, USA By Maxwell Pommer and J. Frederick Sarg shelfal waters in transgressions. This resulted in accumulation and microbial decay of S-rich OM, phosphatization, carbonate precipitation, silicification, as well as deposition of calcitic biotic debris (bryozoans, brachiopods, and crinoids) and micrite. Relative to landwards and highstand marine components, transgressive basinal marine carbonates and silica are δ18O-depleted due to microbial decay of OM. Extensive cementation coupled with near-surface compaction and recrystallization of micrite occluded large portions of porosity in transgressive phosphorites and carbonates. Porosity in these rocks is dominated by interparticle and, to a lesser degree, intraparticle microporosity in microbored phosphatized and micritized grains. Phosphorites are compacted where cements are not pervasive. OM-rich sediments host minimal volumes of interparticle nanoporosity, due to mechanical compaction and incursion of secondary OM (bitumen) during burial. PRC OM is S-rich, due to sulfate-reducing bacterial enrichment, and locally
Note: This manuscript is feature in SEPM Special Publication #112 – Carbonate Pore Systems: New Developments and Case Studies Pore systems in the Middle Permian Phosphoria Rock Complex (PRC), Rocky Mountain Region, USA, evolved with biotic and chemical dynamics in a shallow epicontinental seaway undergoing extreme environmental shifts. Biochemical responses to environmental changes directly affected pore systems and controlled diagenetic pathways through burial. Petrographic methods and spatially resolved measurements of δ18O in sequence-stratigraphic context allow characterization of pore systems and their evolution in heterogenous biochemical sediments. Pore systems vary regionally and across systems tracts on second(9 – 10MY) and third-orders (2 – 5MY) timescales. Minimal porosity occurs in transgressive mudrocks rich in organic matter (OM), phosphorites, and carbonates. Cool, acidic, low-oxygen, nutrient-rich basinal waters interacted with warm open to restricted MAXWELL POMMER, PHD Max is a geologist who utilizes stratigraphic, petrographic, and geochemical methods to study hydrocarbon systems and Earth history. He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado Boulder, a master’s from The University of Texas at OUTCROP | November 2019
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Austin, and a PhD from Colorado School of Mines. Max’s research focuses on biochemical sedimentary systems, poresystem evolution, and environmental changes imprinted in the rock record. Academically, he has researched the Eagle Ford Formation, the Phosphoria 20
Rock Complex, and the Green River Formation. He has worked as a petrographic and stratigraphic consultant for domestic and international oil and gas companies since 2011. Currently, he is Senior Geologic Advisor with Premier Oilfield Group in Denver, Colorado.
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RMAG LUNCHEON PROGRAMS carbonate diagenesis resulted in small volumes of intraparticle, interparticle, and moldic porosity, as well as increased susceptibility to fracturing and associated permeability enhancement. Chalcedony in spiculites and silicified carbonates host minor volumes of porosity where moganite crystallites dissolved during hydrocarbon migration. Highstand dolomites host abundant intercrystalline, moldic, fenestral, and interparticle macroporosity and microporosity, especially in peloidal wackestones, mollusc debris, ooid grainstones, and peritidal microbialites. Dolomitization resulted in dissolution of aragonitic mollusc and ooids, cementation, and preservation of primary porosity. Porosity loss through burial in dolomites occurs through mechanical compaction, and to a lesser degree, precipitation of zoned carbonate cements that are δ18O-depleted relative to earlier dolomite. Compaction strongly decreases intercrystalline porosity in dolomitized peloidal wackestones. Secondary OM related to hydrocarbon migration coats surfaces and fills small pore-volumes, inhibiting burial cementation.
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abundant. This drove early generation of secondary OM and inhibited OM-hosted porosity development through thermal maturation. Large volumes of porosity accumulated in highstand sediments and varied with transitions from silicisponge spicule cherts and calcitic-biota carbonates to pervasively dolomitized micritic, peloidal, aragonitic mollusc, and peritidal microbial sediments. These biochemical transitions, and ultimately pore-system evolution, was driven by interaction between oxygenated open marine waters, eolian siliciclastic debris, and increasingly restricted shelfal waters. Marine carbonate and silica δ18O are consistent with Middle Permian open marine waters but are enriched landwards and through highstands with evaporative fractionation. This, δ18O-enriched authigenic silica in carbonates and evaporite replacements, as well as δ18O-enrichment through silica precipitation suggest dolomitization, and silicification were driven by evaporitic processes. In spiculitic cherts and siltstones, silicification and
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RMAG LUNCHEON PROGRAMS Speaker: Ben Burke, PhD | December 4, 2019
Hydrothermal Processes at Hereford Field, DJ Basin, CO: Implications for Niobrara & Codell Development & Production By Ben Burke, PhD, HighPoint Resources, Denver, Colorado
BEN BURKE is an experienced geoscientist and manager with experience at large and small public as well as at private equity-backed oil and gas operators. He is currently the geoscience advisor at HighPoint Resources (HPR) in Denver. Previously, he was the geologist and geoscience manager at Fifth Creek Energy (FCE) in Greenwood Village, Colorado. Fifth Creek combined with Bill Barrett Corporation to form HighPoint Resources in March 2018. Previous to HPR/FCE, OUTCROP | November 2019
are well documented in pure and applied geologic literature, particularly mining-related studies on ore genesis. Few studies exist on hydrothermal processes in sedimentary basins beneath minable depths. Using an integrated analysis of a variety of data types, including elemental chemistry, minerology, 3D seismic, regional wireline logs, regional gravity data, pyrolysis, and drilling parameters, this study interprets a hydrothermally emplaced ore body at depth in the Cretaceous Codell sandstone in the northern DJ Basin of Colorado. Elevated copper, lead, and zinc values observed by x-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis of cuttings
The Colorado Mineral Belt (CMB) is present as a result of hydrothermal processes affecting a large swath of Colorado from southwest to northeast. Many of the state’s precious metals mining areas are present as a result of that hydrothermal activity. The sedimentary system expression of this deformation are the five major fault zones cutting through the center of the DJ Basin of northeastern Colorado. More recently, workers have documented a probable relationship between the CMB, faulting, and organic maturity in the northern DJ Basin of far northern Weld County, Colorado, and southeastern Wyoming. Modern and paleo-hydrothermal processes and their associated host rocks and mineral assemblages
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he was a senior geologist for Fidelity Exploration & Production Company in Denver working east Texas, Power River Basin, and Williston Basin assets. He worked in operations geoscience and production asset stewardship for Noble Energy’s Denver-based DJ Basin team. He started his oil and gas career with ExxonMobil Exploration, Development, and Production companies in Houston working a variety of assets worldwide with a focus on West African deepwater. Prior to graduate school, he worked 22
for Woodard & Curran environmental consultants in Cheshire, Connecticut, collecting and analyzing water chemistry pre- and post- remediation at hazardous contamination sites in the northeastern US. He holds an AB magna cum laude from Bowdoin College in geology and Russian language, a MBA in general management from Texas A&M University, and a PhD in Earth Sciences (geomorphology and trace metals geochemistry) from Dartmouth College. Vol. 68, No. 11 | www.rmag.org
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RMAG LUNCHEON PROGRAMS This zone is bounded by an upper and lower bioturbated zone that has a different porosity and permeability relationship than laminated sand. The immediate implication of the ore body presence is that the hydrothermal system expression can be a geohazard. Some wells saw slower drilling rates of penetration (ROP), others did not. Where ROP was affected, it was affected dramatically. Initial production gas in the Codell had composition and stable isotope values not statistically significantly different from other Codelll wells at Hereford, whereas the Niobrara gas showed incremental lower maturity, but maturity still within the oil window. Regional well log-based mapping suggest lowered deep resistivity could be an expression of this hydrothermal activity. The area of likely hydrothermal impact does not see lowered production volumes. A fundamental petroleum system implication relates to the timing of when the petroleum system developed relative to the hydrothermal system.
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appear at locations along wellbores in Hereford Field where a 3D seismic bulk density inversion volume shows edges of higher bulk density in the Codell Formation. Careful analysis of drilling and geosteering parameters, confirmed by further XRF and x-ray diffraction spectrometry indicate the metals are present in the sand-rich laminated facies of the Codell, a zone that is 4-8 feet thick in this part of the basin.
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RMAG ON THE ROCKS
Piret Plink-Bjorklund (red jacket) stands atop a ridge forming section of (Campanian) Hygiene Sandstone at its type locality discussing its sedimentary features and origin. Grad student and cotrip-leader Mike Genecov stands above her to the left. Photo courtesy Richard Bottjer.
Hiking on the Hygiene Sandstone Type Section Hygiene, Colorado, October 12, 2019 By Denise M. Stone and Richard Bottjer
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LOCATION
The eighth and final field trip for the 2019 RMAG season began on a crisp-air, blue-sky Saturday morning in Hygiene, Colorado, about 45 minutes north of downtown Denver. A group of 19 met to examine the fascinating type-section of the Hygiene Sandstone, a thin but significant, east-dipping Cretaceous sand body loaded with easily-seen sedimentary features. After getting a morning coffee at the Mountain Fountain in Hygiene the group was off to the rocks.
The Hygiene Sandstone is a Campanian age unit within the Denver Basin, that outcrops about 1.6 miles west of N 75th Street along Hygiene Road. The type section is located on private property on the south side of the flood plain formed by the east-flowing St. Vrain Creek. It is shown on the USGS geological map published by Madole, et. al.
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An outcrop of Hygiene Sandstone at its type section near Hygiene, Colorado located about 45 minutes north of downtown Denver. The sands are heavily lichen-covered but angular cross-beds and other sedimentary features are easily seen. Photo courtesy Richard Bottjer. that begins in the west and thins and finally pinches out eastward. It is enclosed above and below by the Pierre Shale. The Hygiene is thought to be equivalent to the Shannon Sandstone in Wyoming. We spent the day scrambling around on the Hygiene outcrop, sharing observations and having lively group discussions. This location was our only stop for the day and our vehicles were parked nearby, so there was no long off-road hike required. We had plenty of time to see details, put hand lenses to work and ponder the genesis and deposition of the Hygiene. Our leaders for the day were Piret Plink-Bjorklund, Stratigraphy and Sedimentology Associate Professor at Colorado School of Mines, and Mike
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(1998). Thanks to the efforts of On The Rocks Committee members Donna Anderson and Richard Bottjer, RMAG was fortunate and grateful to receive access to the outcrop for the day from the delightful geologist-turned-engineer owner of Ridge Ranch Cattle Company.
GEOLOGICAL SETTING
The type-section is an erosional remnant that in outcrop structurally resembles a low relief mini-hogback on the same trend as the front range. The outcrop trends north-south for a half mile, is approximately 30-40’ thick and dips 40 degrees east. It is one of several stray tongues of Cretaceous sandstone
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Donna Anderson and Nathan LaFontaine discuss sedimentary features in a 40’ conventional core of the Hygiene Sandstone taken from the XO Exploration, #1 Grt Western Sugar well. The well is located 20 miles to the northeast of the type locality. Photo courtesy Mike Tischer. OUTCROP | November 2019
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ON-THE-ROCKS FIELD TRIP REPORT
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Genecov, Graduate Student, who is currently doing his PhD dissertation on the Hygiene Sandstone including this locality. Both were delighted to share their knowledge with the group, including results of prior studies.
DEPOSITIONAL ENVIRONMENT
The depositional environment for the Hygiene was first interpreted as an offshore bar. However, over the years and after further study, there was a different environment proposed. Now, at the type section, the formation is thought to be deposited by an east trending delta system with high tidal influence redistributing sands along an active shoreface. The exercise for the day was for each of us to make our own fresh observations with new eyes, discuss what we observe, and call on our own thinking and knowledge. What did we think? A total of 8 stratigraphic sections along the outcrop were measured and published by Louise Kiteley almost 10 years ago (Plink-Bjorklund and Kiteley, 2014). There are clear lateral variations in architecture and abundant sedimentary features documented in Looking north across the ridge-forming Hygiene Sandstone type locality. The flood her measured sections. Along the half plain of the St Vrain Creek is in the green distance. Photo courtesy Mike Tischer. mile of outcrop there are abundant stacked clinoforms and large convex-up bedsets, overall these coarsen and become larger in scale upsection. was from the west, the sediment transport to the The sandstones are interspersed with thin laysouth seen by paleocurrents is believed to be tidally ers of mud-drape and associated bioturbation, indicontrolled. By walking the length of the outcrop and cating a marine shoreface. Burrows and voids in the following bedding, one could see the sandstone lenssandstone described as “coin slots” were observed. es advancing southward, overstepping and building These may have formed by compressed burrows and over each other. The water depth during deposition or dissolved mudstone rip-up clasts. Paleocurrent was likely very shallow but could have reached a few indicators are abundant in the section and unanitens of meters at maximum. We did not see either mously indicate that north to south sediment transthe upper or lower contact of the Hygiene against port prevailed. Although the main source of sand CONTINUED ON PAGE 30
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ON-THE-ROCKS FIELD TRIP REPORT
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CONVENTIONAL CORE
the Pierre Shale.
An unexpected bonus to the trip was seeing 40 feet of conventional core of the Hygiene Sandstone. It was brought for the group to view and compare to the outcrop. It was cut from the XO Exploration, #1 Grt Western Sugar well, a dry hole drilled 20 miles to the northeast of this locality. At that location the Hygiene was at a measured depth of 4500 feet. In the core, small scale sedimentary features seen in outcrop were visible such as cross-laminations and bioturbation. Although a comparable vertical thickness of section was seen in both outcrop and core, the outcrop clearly provided greater 3D perspective.
HYDROCARBONS The Hygiene and Terry Sandstones are oil productive from shallow depths (3,500 to 4,500 feet) in the Denver Basin. Oil production from these reservoirs was first established in the 1950s, but most of the development began in 1971 based on shows encountered while drilling deeper J Sandstone (Dakota) tests, and eventually fields including Spindle, Hambert, Aristocrat, La Poudre, and Latham were discovered and developed (Ladd, 2001). The best reservoir in these conventional stratigraphic trap fields is the cross-bedded sandstone facies. The bioturbated facies is considered to be non-reservoir due to lower permeability and oil saturations (Pittman, 1988). Both the Terry and Hygiene sandstone reservoirs are highly compartmentalized (Slatt, et. al, 1997). In the past most of this compartmentalization has been attributed to faulting, however, field observations made on this trip suggest a high potential for stratigraphic compartmentalization as well. A subsurface comparison of the Hygiene Sandstone was made with the Sussex Sandstone in the Powder River Basin, which is the target of horizontal drilling where it is overpressured at depths below 10,000 feet. There the bioturbated sandstone facies is the primary reservoir (Bottjer, et. al, 2014). Detailed engineering work has identified stratigraphic reservoir compartments in the higher-permeability cross-bedded sandstone facies with a 10:1 aspect ratio (Stright and Bottjer, 2014), which can best be explained by sandstone “shingles” similar to those seen at this Hygiene sandstone outcrop. These higher-permeability compartments are interpreted as being responsible for interference between horizontal wells and older vertical wells, and between north-south-oriented horizontal wells. Options including drilling horizontal wells parallel to the azimuth of these higher-permeability “shingles” were discussed as possible solutions to reduce interference.
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THE NAME HYGIENE
In the late 1800’s the name Hygiene was given to this community because it had a sanitarium to house and care for tuberculosis patients. The high and dry climate of Colorado was thought to be a help for those suffering from tuberculosis. Many patients came great distances seeking a cure. Fortunately, our group had lots of cool crisp Colorado air for our field day. The weather was super and there wasn’t any need to broom snow off the outcrop as the four inches that had fallen in the greater Denver area two days earlier had completely melted. The RMAG field trip season for 2019 is now complete. Thanks to all who attended one or more trips this season, the OTR Committee hopes you enjoyed the occasion and learned lots of geology. Trips for the 2020 field season are in the idea stages right now, so if you have any special requests, let us know.
REFERENCES
Bottjer, R.J., M.L. Hendricks, D.H. Stright, Jr., and J.A. Bettridge, 2014, Sussex Sandstone, Hornbuckle Trend, Powder River Basin, Wyoming: Lithofacies and Reservoir Properties in a Tight Oil Play: Core Poster Presentation, AAPG Rocky Mountain Section Meeting, Denver, Colorado, July 21, 2014 Kiteley, L. W., 1985, Type section of the Hygiene
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Sandstone Member of the Pierre Shale, in Chamberlin, C.K., E.G. Kauffman, L.M.W. Kiteley, and M.G. Lockley (eds.), A field guide to environments of deposition (and trace fossils) of Cretaceous sandstones of the western interior: SEPM Midyear meeting, Golden, Colorado, Rocky Mountain Section SEPM Field Trip No. 3, p. 3-44 to 3-50 Ladd, J.H., 2001, An overview and development history of the Wattenberg Field, in Anderson, D.S., J.W. Robinson, J.E. Estes-Jackson, and E.B. Coalson (eds.), Gas in the Rockies: RMAG Guidebook, Chapter 4, p. 29-42 Madole, R. F., W. A. Braddock, and R. B. Colton, 1998, Geologic map of the Hygiene quadrangle, Boulder County, Colorado: U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-1772, 1:24,000, 1 plate Pittman, E. D., 1988, Diagenesis of Terry Sandstone (Upper Cretaceous), Spindle Field, Colorado: Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, v. 58, p. 785-800 Plink-Bjorklund, P., and L. Kiteley, 2014, Denver Basin isolated Photo of a section of conventional core of the Hygiene Sandstone from the XO sandbodies: signature of dynamExploration, #1 Grt Western Sugar well. A ten-inch interval of highly bioturbated ic subsidence, Laramide upsandstone is overlain by thin gray and white alternating low-energy laminae. lifts, and shoreline transitions: Photo courtesy Mike Tischer. AAPG Search and Discovery Article 10567, posted Jan. 20, 2014, of petroleum technology in the Rocky Mountain adapted from oral presentation given at AAPG area: RMAG annual guidebook, p. 205-224 Annual Convention, Pittsburgh, PA, May 19-22, Stright Jr., D.H., and R. J. Bottjer, 2014, Long-term 2013, 21pp. linear flow analysis: finding infill sweet spots in Slatt, R. M., D. H. Edington, and A.A. Fursova, underperforming oil and gas fields: Society of Pe1997, Use of a large database for revealing a troleum Engineers SPE 169095, presented at the complexly compartmentalized reservoir, DenSPE Improved Oil Recovery Symposium, Tulsa, ver Basin, Colorado, in Coalson, E.B., J.C. Osmond, and E.T. Williams (eds.), Innovative applications Oklahoma, USA, April 12-16, 2014 Vol. 68, No. 11 | www.rmag.org
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2019 RMAG Award Recipients RMAG HONORARY MEMBERSHIP, 2019
• Terrilyn M. Olson
Terrilyn M. Olson
RMAG MICHAEL S. JOHNSON EXPLORER OF THE YEAR AWARD, 2019 • David Schmude and Brian Berwick RMAG OUTSTANDING SCIENTIST AWARD, 2019 • Ronald C. Johnson RMAG GEOSCIENCES IN THE MEDIA, 2019 • Dr. Kirk Johnson and Dr. William Clyde DISTINGUISHED SERVICE TO RMAG AWARD, 2019 • Sarah Edwards RMAG DISTINGUISHED PUBLIC SERVICE TO EARTH SCIENCE AWARD, 2019 • Dr. Robert Raynolds and Dr. James Hagadorn
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The Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists (RMAG) is pleased to present Honorary Membership to Terri Olson. This award is given for outstanding and distinguished service to RMAG and to the geologic profession. Terri began her education as a geologist/petrologist at the University of Virginia before transferring to Colorado College where she obtained a B.A. degree in Geology. She went on to earn her Masters at Dartmouth College. Her master’s thesis was on sedimentary tectonics of the Jalipur Sequence, Northwest Frontier Province, Pakistan. She started her career with Amoco Production Company (Amoco) in Denver, working on exploration and development projects in California, New Mexico, Nevada, and Oklahoma. Terri later transferred to Stavanger, Norway after attending the Amoco Petrophysics School in Tulsa. In Norway, she worked as the petrophysicist on Valhall field in the North Sea. Following BP’s acquisition of Amoco in 2000, Terri returned to Denver where she worked for Tom Brown and then for Encana. At Encana, she worked in New Ventures 32
exploration and as geoscience development advisor. Terri joined EOG in 2008 as a petrophysical advisor where she further refined the value of high-resolution imaging for characterization of mudstone reservoirs. She coordinated these imaging efforts and the transfer of such technology within EOG. Terri joined FEI Oil & Gas (FEI) in 2015 where her expertise in digital rock and image analysis software proved invaluable to predicting reservoir quality as well as providing pore scale modeling and fluid sensitivity analyses. Terri formed Digital Rock Petrophysics in Golden in the spring of 2016. She continues to consult for FEI and other companies, designing imaging projects and bringing over 33 years of petrophysical insights to image data. She served as RMAG President in 2018 and President-Elect in 2017. Terri served as Chair of both the RMAG and AAPG Publications Committees and was Senior Associate Editor for unconventionals for AAPG for three years. The AAPG Bulletin has benefitted from her efforts as associate editor for over 15 years. She co-edited a Piceance Basin guidebook for RMAG in 2003 for which she authored a paper on White River Dome Field. She also edited a 2016 Memoir for AAPG, Unconventional Reservoir Pore Systems.
RMAG HONORARY MEMBERSHIP, 2019
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2019 RMAG AWARD RECIPIENTS
RMAG MICHAEL S. JOHNSON EXPLORER OF THE YEAR AWARD, 2019
Through August 2019, 26 wells have been drilled in the play and 24 have been completed. The EUR’s for these wells range from 1.0 MMBO to 2.0+ MMBO and the oil content averages 90%. The play, as identified by Axia, contains up to 8 zones. Each zone is about 300’ thick. Six of the 8 zones have been tested so far. The over-pressured oil window, as mapped, is estimated to contain 115 Billion Barrels of Oil (BBO) in place and encompasses about 225,000 acres. Initial recovery estimates range from 9 to 12 % For their exploration instincts in delineating and
Terri received a distinguished service award from RMAG in 2007 and from AAPG in 2016. She has served on the boards of directors of RMAG and DWLS and is a valued member of AAPG, SPWLA, SPE, RMAG and DWLS. For her significant contributions to the advancement of the petrophysical side of geology and considerable time volunteering for RMAG and other professional geological and petrophysical societies, the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists is pleased to grant Honorary Membership to Terri M. Olson.
while delineating their Monument Butte asset. The team at Axia realized that an unconventional overpressured resource was present and began to acquire acreage on behalf of the company. Butcher Butte is a fairly unique resource play in that it is not very gassy and yet it is overpressured in the range of 0.65 to 0.85 psi per foot of depth. The top of overpressure is controlled by depth and related maturity instead of stratigraphy. The pressure cell thickness ranges from about 100 to 2500 feet. The vertical drilling depths required to reach the over-pressured targets range from approximately 8,500 to 11,000 feet.
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David Schmude and Brian Berwick The Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists is pleased to present to David Schmude and Brian Berwick of Axia Energy, the 2019 Michael S. Johnson Explorer of the Year Award. This award is given for their role in recognizing and delineating the Butcher Butte - Green River/ Wasatch Oil Resource play, an overpressured oil accumulation in the Green River and Wasatch formations of the Uinta Basin. As is typically the case with exploratory successes, previous work of other organizations and individuals was critical to their achievement. Newfield drilled a number of vertical and horizontal wells in the general area
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2019 RMAG AWARD RECIPIENTS
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bringing to commerciality the Butcher Butte - Green River/ Wasatch Oil Resource, Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists is honored to award the 2019 Michael S. Johnson Outstanding Explorer of the Year Award to David Schmude and Brian Berwick of Axia Energy.
RMAG OUTSTANDING SCIENTIST AWARD, 2019
Ronald C. Johnson
The Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists is pleased to present Ronald C. Johnson with the Outstanding Scientist Award for 2019. Ronald studied geology at State University of New York at Buffalo receiving a Bachelor’s degree in 1972 and a Master’s degree in 1974. During the summers of 1972 and 1973, Ronald started his career with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) as a field assistant. He accepted a full time position with the USGS in 1974 where he has dedicated the past forty four (44) years to the study of Rocky Mountain geology. It is difficult to convey the sheer volume of work that Ronald Johnson has generated to the study of geology during his career. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 articles focused on the study of surface and subsurface geology. He has presented his findings to the benefit of the public and industry, at more than 100 technical meetings, conferences and
workshops. His impressive body of work spans a wide range of topics and geologic disciplines, including, but not limited to, the mapping of surface geology, generation of detailed subsurface cross sections, mapping of drill stem test recoveries and detailed studies on reservoir characterization and resource assessment. Ronald’s publications include studies from many Rockies basins including the Big Horn, Wind River, Albuquerque and Raton basins. Some of his greatest contributions to the geologic community are from the Uinta, Green River and Piceance basins, where he focused predominantly on the study of hydrocarbon sources and reservoirs of Cretaceous through Eocene age formations. Ronald has published more than 50 papers in these settings alone - detailing sedimentology, stratigraphy, maturity, and reserve estimation, of basin-centered gas, coal-bed methane, oil shale and conventional reservoirs. This significant volume of work serves as an excellent foundation for any geologist venturing into these areas for the first time or a seasoned professional in search of new ideas. During the past five years, Ronald has been studying the developing tight oil play in lacustrine rocks of the Green River Formation in the Uinta Basin. This insightful work led to the publication discussing the tight oil potential of the Uteland Butte member in 2015 and subsequent published works on the
topic of lacustrine tight oil plays. One paper, Stratigraphic intervals for oil and tar sands deposits in the Uinta Basin, won the 2017 Best Paper Award from the Mountain Geologist. In recognition of his significant volume of work in the field of stratigraphy, geochemistry, and the assessment of conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon reservoir and source rocks throughout the Rockies, the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists is pleased to award Ronald C. Johnson the 2019 Award for Outstanding Scientist.
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RMAG GEOSCIENCES IN THE MEDIA, 2019
Dr. Kirk Johnson and Dr. William Clyde The Rocky Mountain Association of Geologist is pleased to award the 2019 Geosciences in the Media Award to Kirk Johnson and William Clyde for their outstanding publication: Ancient Wyoming: A Dozen Lost Worlds Based on the Geology of the Bighorn Basin, Fulcrum Publishing, 2016. Ancient Wyoming: A Dozen Lost Worlds Based on the Geology of the Bighorn Basin was sponsored by a grant from the National Science Foundation to the Denver Museum of Natural History. The book lends itself to educators, geologists, paleontologists and casual reader alike. It is a wonderfully illustrated, science-driven and well researched book. The authors include great
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Vol. 68, No. 11 | www.rmag.org
2019 RMAG AWARD RECIPIENTS
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community. Throughout her numerous roles on RMAG’s Earth Science Education Outreach Committee, Sarah has shared her passion for geology and delivered educational talks at multiple local schools. The program outreach and growth has been significant since her involvement. She became the Committee Chair for RMAG’s Earth Science Education Outreach in 2019. Sarah’s love of math, rocks, and the outdoors, led her to earn her B.S., Geological Engineering, and M.S., Geology, degrees from the Colorado School of Mines in 2009 and 2011 respectively. She
photographs of fossils allowing the reader to clearly imagine and walk thru geologic time. Wyoming has experienced many different environments over geologic time including deep oceans, rain forests, lagoons, deserts and episodes of mountain building. These ancient ecosystems are preserved in the rock record of the Big Horn Basin. The book succeeds in bringing three hundred million years of ancient landscapes to life with excellent resources further detailing where to visit the Bighorn basin ‘present day.’ Drs. Johnson and Clyde bring the practice of scientific observation front and center. The artistic renderings, photos, charts and text encourage the reader to understand how geoscientists look at layers of rock to determine environments of deposition and surrounding landscapes. The book is highly useful and informative of geology and earth sciences. Dr. Kirk Johnson is the Sant Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Here he has overseen the world’s largest natural history collection since 2012. Prior to joining the Smithsonian, Dr Johnson was a paleontologist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science who led expeditions in 18 states and 11 countries. His research focuses on fossil plants and the extinction of the dinosaurs. He is known for his scientific articles, popular books, museum
exhibitions, documentaries and collaborations with artists. Dr. Johnson received his PhD in geology and paleobotany from Yale University. Dr. William Clyde is Professor of Geology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of New Hampshire. His teaching and research focus on paleontology and Earth history. A key interest is further understanding how climate change, tectonics and other geological forces influence mammalian evolution and the sedimentary rock record. Dr. Clyde received his M.S. and PhD in Geology from the University of Michigan. In recognition of their outstanding publication, Ancient Wyoming: A Dozen Lost Worlds Based on the Geology of the Bighorn Basin and its ongoing contribution to both classroom and greater public understanding of geology, the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists proudly presents the 2019 Geosciences in the Media Award to Dr. Kirk Johnson and Dr. William Clyde.
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DISTINGUISHED SERVICE TO RMAG AWARD, 2019
Sarah Edwards The Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists is pleased to present Sarah Edwards, M.S. with its 2019 Distinguished Service to RMAG Award for her contributions to the Association. Sarah served as a Volunteer Coordinator and worked tirelessly to increase outreach involvement in the local K12 35
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2019 RMAG AWARD RECIPIENTS
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RMAG DISTINGUISHED PUBLIC SERVICE TO EARTH SCIENCE AWARD, 2019
Dr. Robert Raynolds and Dr. James Hagadorn It is with great pleasure that the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists presents the 2019 Distinguished Public Service to Earth Science Award to Robert Raynolds and James Hagadorn of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS). This award is in recognition of the 2017 publication of an updated stratigraphic chart for the State of Colorado (MS-53 in the Colorado Geological Survey (CGS) system) which was a collaborative effort between DMNS and CGS. Dr. Hagadorn is the Tim and Kathryn Ryan Curator of Geology for DMNS while Dr. Raynolds has long been associated with DMNS as an outstanding volunteer. The MS-53 chart is a significant update of a 1977 stratigraphic chart for Colorado by
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Richard Pearl and is presented as a high quality 42” x 39” offset print. Collaboration is a significant aspect of this work – with sixty-three individuals acknowledged on the published chart. The chart was drafted by Larry Scott of CGS and is wonderfully detailed and beautifully presented. Where available, geochronologic constraints on units are indicated. Most of the units on this chart have been cast upon the International Commission on Stratigraphy’s chronostratigraphic chart v. 2015/01. This chart is a superb tool for communicating many aspects of the Proterozoic and Phanerozoic geology of Colorado. Insets on the chart describe the major geologic features and basins of the state that were the focus of this work with dominant depositional environments depicted for each unit. Major mountain-building and erosional events and regional unconformities that dominate Colorado’s stratigraphy are also well illustrated. It is a tremendous effort and significant contribution to the publics’ further understanding of the geology of this region. In recognition of this timely and important work, The Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists is honored to present the 2019 Distinguished Public Service to Earth Science Award to Dr. Robert Raynolds and Dr. James Hagadorn.
has been employed as a Senior Geologist at SM Energy (SM) for eight years. During her scholastic years and tenure at SM, Sarah has demonstrated a deep commitment to K12 educational outreach. From captaining MS150 bike charity rides to educating at-risk youth and participating in Habitat for Humanity builds, Sarah has a far-reaching ability to instill scientific knowledge. Her volunteer service with the Montana Geological Society led her to promote earth science in the Billings, Montana community through work with Science Expositions and Girls in Science events. Sarah also developed a program and activities for Montana Energy/Engineering Day, where middle school students developed an increased awareness of career possibilities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) related fields including learning how to calculate volumetrics. Since 2018, Sarah has served as a coordinator for SM’s participation in Energy Day. She was instrumental in promoting energy mindfulness and designing engaging STEM activities to educate youth of all ages. Sarah enjoys every opportunity to educate others about Earth Science. She consistently sparks a light in all who have the pleasure to interact with her. Her innate ability to teach and promote earth
science is an inspiration to growing minds. In recognition of her dedication to Earth Science Education Outreach, and her continuing commitment to inspiring future geoscientists, the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists is pleased to present Sarah Edwards the 2019 Distinguished Service to RMAG Award.
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Vol. 68, No. 11 | www.rmag.org
Mineralogy XRD XRF FTIR
Geochemistry Programmed Pyrolysis Organic Geochemistry Analysis Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry Stable Isotopes Fluid Analysis
Water Analyses UV/VIS ICP-OES
Proudly developing Colorado’s energy potential through innovation, safety and a commitment to our community l e a r n m o r e at : w w w . c r e s t o n e p e a k r e s o u r c e s . c o m
Vol. 68, No. 11 | www.rmag.org
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2 19
RMAG Foundation Scholarship Winners During 2019, the RMAG Foundation honored eight research scholarship awardees, listed here with their universities or college and their research topics. Our congratulations to the winners.
The origin and timing of CO2 reservoired in the
RACHEL HAVRANEK, University of Colorado, Boulder, Dudley and Marion Bolyard/University of Colorado Scholarship
Duperow Formation, Kevin Dome, Montana
Developing a multiport soil vapor storage system
KATELYN BARTON, Brigham Young University, Michael S. Johnson Scholarship
ROBIN HILDERMAN, Colorado College, Philip J. McKenna Memorial Scholarship
Links between eruptive styles and magmatic evolution at shield volcanoes:
La-ICP-MS of U-Pb zircon and Hf isotope geochemistry of the Hinsdale
ELIJAH ADENIYI, Montana State University, Norman F. Foster Memorial Scholarship
Snake River Plain, Idaho
Formation San Juan, Colorado
Michael Frothingham, University of Colorado, Boulder, Stone/ Hollberg Memorial Scholarship
ELISABETH G. RAU, Baylor University, Robert M. Cluff Memorial Scholarship Prediction of depositional facies and associated rock quality attributes from wireline logs within
Crystal- to Crustal-Scale Seismic Anisotropy of Continental Crust
the Late Devonian Duvernay Formation
ZOE HAVELENA, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Gary Babcock Memorial Scholarship
Trevor Van Dyke, Iowa State University, Veterans Memorial Scholarship The geology, geochemistry, and mineralogy of the metamorphosed Dawson massive sulfide and gold deposit, Canyon City, Colorado
Sulfuric acid speleogenesis of caves in the Eastern Great Basin
The RMAG Foundation provided a one-year membership to RMAG for each of these students. OUTCROP | November 2019
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2019
Neal J. Harr Memorial Award Winners (The “Pick” Awards)
Honoring the top senior geology majors in all 10 Colorado Universities and Colleges
Ashley How, Adams State College Benjamin Lloyd, Colorado College Tatjana Scherschel, Colorado School of Mine William Gnesda, Colorado State University Connor Broaddus, Ft. Lewis College Tristan Bates, Colorado Mesa University Carlton Mueller, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder Kate M. Nelson, Univ. of Northern Colorado Gordon Gianniny, Western State University Celine “Bean” Gill, Metro State University
The RMAG Foundation provided a one-year RMAG membership to each of these students.
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The RMAG Foundation in 2019 By Donna Anderson the RMAG May luncheon and receive student memberships to the RMAG.
“To inspire and educate the current and next generations of earth scientists”: that is the mission of the RMAG Foundation.
SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
FOUNDATION ORIGIN AND EARLY PROGRAMS
As resources grew with the generous contributions of the RMAG membership, including endowments of named scholarship funds, the Foundation began offering scholarships to graduate and undergraduate students conducting geologic research in the Rocky Mountain region. Since 2017, the Foundation offers nine named scholarships annually. In 2019 the Foundation evaluated 60 applications for the various scholarships, an increase over past years. Each year, scholarship awardees are given student memberships to the RMAG and are recognized at the April RMAG luncheon.
Established 44 years ago as the philanthropic arm of the RMAG, the RMAG Foundation began by financially supporting RMAG continuing education courses and publications, along with K-12 geology teaching and science fair awards. The Foundation also supported the establishment of the Denver Earth Resources Library (DERL) and the geologic signage along the I-70 roadcut, Point of Geologic Interest. Annually, it recognized (and still does) outstanding graduating seniors from all ten Front Range universities and colleges with the Neal Harr Pick Awards. The Pick awardees are always recognized at
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THE RMAG FOUNDATION IN 2019
2019 Neal Harr Pick Awardees (left to right): Prof. Andres Alsan (Colorado Mesa Univ.). Prof. Barbara Echohawk (Metro State Univ.); Celine “Bean” Gill (Metro State Univ.); Tristan Bates (Colorado Mesa Univ.); Carlton Mueller (Univ. of Colorado, Boulder); Tatjana Scherschel (Colorado School of Mines); Prof. Steve Enders (Colorado School of Mines); Kate M. Nelson (Univ. of Northern Colorado); Prof. Graham Baird (Univ. of Northern Colorado); and Sharan Christ and Bill Harr (daughter and son of Neal J. Harr). Missing from photo: Ashley How (Adams State Univ.). Students unable to attend luncheon: Benjamin Lloyd (Colorado College); William Gnesda (Colorado State Univ.); Connor Broaddus (Fort Lewis College); and Gordon Gianniny (Western State College). Bash, and the RMAG Teacher of the Year Award that recognizes excellent K-12 Earth Science teachers and their schools.
»»CONTINUED FROM PAGE 40 EARTH SCIENCE COMMUNITY SUPPORT The Foundation’s general fund continues to support the earth science community as it always has. For example, in 2019 the Foundation is helping support the Dinosaur Ridge PBS Science Bowl event that occurs this month. In addition, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science received a grant to support research on Front Range geology. Fostering the remembrance of RMAG and DGS past-President Randy Ray, the Foundation helped create the R. Randy Ray “Best Paper Award” at the annual 3D Seismic Symposium and continues to support that event. The Foundation also provides funds for the annual Michael S. Johnson Explorer of the Year Award, presented at the Rockbuster’s
Vol. 68, No. 11 | www.rmag.org
OUR COMMITMENT
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The current Trustees, Laura Wray (Chairperson), David Taylor (Treasurer), Donna Anderson (Secretary), Tanya Inks, Kurt Reisser, Mitchell Reynolds, and John Robinson, all financially support the Foundation as a show of our commitment. We hope you, too, find a good reason to show your support by donating via our website www.rmagfoundation.org or by mailing a check to the RMAG Foundation at 1550 Larimer Street, Suite 900, Denver, CO 80202. Your contributions make our mission and shared vision possible.
OUTCROP | November 2019
Attendees at the Fall Symposium listen to Rachel Williams presenting her and David Bell’s work on one of Oxy’s conventional carbonate reservoirs. Photo by Debby Watkins.
Highlights of the RMAG DWLS 2019 Fall Symposium Multiscale Imaging for Reservoir Optimization By Kira Timm and Katie Joe McDonough
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(REVs) which appropriately characterize the rock. Presentations for the morning session primarily focused on fine-scale analysis. Connor Burt (Thermo Fisher Scientific) presented a multi-scale, multi-modal approach to characterize pore systems in unconventional reservoirs. This approach provides both porosity and organic matter characterization as well as mineralogy and sedimentary analysis. One presentation highlight was a method of using micro-CT to image a cleaned, dried sample, then imaging the same sample saturated with diiodomethane and comparing the two volumes to obtain a 3D map of porosity and pore throat diameter.
The joint RMAG and DWLS Fall Symposium kicked off with an excellent historical overview of rock imaging presented by Lyn Canter (Sedimentary Solutions LLC). This presentation set the stage for the following presenters and touched on the various imaging techniques and their applications. Imaging techniques included optical and petrographic microscopy, confocal microscopy, cathodoluminescence, computer tomography (CT), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), automated mineralogy, and atomic force microscopy. Each of these techniques provide different image resolution, emphasizing the need for nested workflows keyed to sample grain size in order to obtain representative elementary volumes
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Exhibitors Scott Oelfke and Anthony Ford at the GeoGraphix/ LMKR booth, while James Shipps works the Impac booth. Photos by Debby Watkins.
Raffle-winner and speaker Andrew Johnson resists efforts to share his winnings with symposium organizer/speaker Terri Olson and Katie Joe McDonough. Photo by Debby Watkins.
Symposium organizer Katrina Yared and Stefani Brakenhoff enjoy the proceedings. Photo by Debby Watkins.
Alan Byrnes’ (Whiting Oil & Gas) presentation focused on a workflow developed to better upscale image-based rock physics simulations of petrophysical rock properties. The methodology corrects the poor resolution of microcracks in micro-CT analysis by analyzing them with FIB-SEM and then upscaling results back to the larger-scale representative elementary volume (REV). Different regions within one REV may be assigned different values, and therefore represent the property distribution at multiple scales. Using these REV porosities, capillary pressure and single- and multiphase-flow simulations may be validated with core measurements. Andrew Fager (Dassault Systèmes) presented a workflow segmenting FIB-SEM volumes into three categories in order to simulate flow pathways through connected pore networks. His numerical modeling of tight rock permeability uses Stokes flow for large, well-connected pores and diffusion gradients for pore sizes below image resolution. Not surprisingly, advection dominates as the flow mechanism in large, well-connected pores, and diffusion dominates in rocks with less connected pore systems. Lastly Brianna Berg (AIM GeoAnalytics) showed how confocal microscopy
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could be used to visualize pore heterogeneity in unconventional and conventional rocks. Her work demonstrated the strong facies dependence on pore size distribution and directional (vertical versus horizontal) heterogeneity, even at the laminae scale. The afternoon session began with reservoir-scale imaging presented by Ellen Scott (Deep Imaging), who introduced a novel application of electromagnetic (EM) imaging for fluid tracking during hydraulic fracturing completions. This technique induces a large electric field over a horizontal well and then measures electromagnetic changes caused by frac fluid migration in the subsurface. It doesn’t interfere with operations and can identify where stimulation occurs, where fracking interferes with adjacent wells and can identify the interaction of well stimulation with faults. Reservoir-scale analyses were presented by both Rachel Aisner Williams (Oxy) and Andrew Johnson (Schlumberger). Rachel showed an integrated characterization of a conventional carbonate reservoir on the Central Basin Platform of the Permian Basin. Using legacy core, cuttings, mudlog and production data from both pilot holes and horizontal wells, the
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RMAG DWLS 2019 FALL SYMPOSIUM also providing the primary pore system. Marsha French (Colorado School of Mines) provided a fascinating look at silica polymorphs using a variety of advanced analytical and imaging techniques. This work showed how silica polymorphs change as fluids change in the system and how these polymorphs can result in a change in A-axis orientation depending on the underlying polymorph. Microcrystalline quartz benefits reservoirs by not only helping preserve primary pore systems, but by offering rigid frameworks to facilitate better completions. In sandstone reservoirs, microcrystalline quartz can prevent cementation on sand grains to preserve porosity while in shale reservoirs, early cementation from reconstituted biogenic silica can prevent compaction in shales. The types of silica polymorphs within a system can be identified using the quartz crystallinity index identified during XRD analysis. Rengarajan Pelapur (Thermo Fisher Scientific) presented a prototype of machine learning that can enhance image analysis techniques by segmenting thin sections into up to 8 colors. This human-in-the-loop approach potentially yields better visualization and quantification of thin section composition, porosity and texture. Overall, it was an inspiring and thought-provoking event, capturing the sublime integration of innovative workflows with our ever-larger, cross-disciplinary datasets. The event concluded with finger foods and drinks, catching up with old friends and colleagues and making new ones. After such an exceptional day, everyone will be looking forward to the spring symposium.
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team demonstrated the ongoing value of “back-tobasics” multidisciplinary reservoir characterization to delineate and optimize reservoir development. They created a depositional model to identify reservoir facies and lateral heterogeneity which was used to assess future drilling potential. Andrew Johnson presented a method for resolving thin-bedded and laminated reservoirs using high resolution image logs and machine learning. This log-sharpening technique bridges a key gap in wireline log resolution by using the higher resolution of image logs to enhance the resolution of resistivity logs. The high resolution logs can image down to 0.1” in water-based mud and 0.2” in oil-based mud allowing for processing and resolution of thin beds. Terri Olson (Digital Rock Petrophysics) and Brad Michalchuk (Anschutz) brought us back to pore scale with an image data examination of Niobrara and Mowry pore systems from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. Porosity comparison showed an evolution in dominant pore type from interparticle to organic matter pores with increased maturity, with less distinctive pore changes in the Mowry mudrocks attributed to variability in organic matter type. The authors demonstrated the impact of reservoir rock fabric and mineralogy on pore system preservation. Highest preserved porosity in the Mowry mudrocks corresponds to intervals high in silica because pores were protected by the rigid siliceous matrix. Highest porosity in the Niobrara closely corresponds to carbonate content because of the rigid framework provided by calcareous pellets acting as ‘grains’ while
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IN THE PIPELINE NOVEMBER 1, 2019
NOVEMBER 8, 2019
NOVEMBER 13, 2019
RMAG Sporting Clays Tournament. Kiowa Creek Sporting Club. Bennett, CO.
DIPS Luncheon. Members $20 and Nonmembers $25. For more information visit www. dipsdenver.com or RSVP to Tim Rathmann, tim@rivunc.com
COGA 35th Annual Meeting, Luncheon, and Expo. 10:30 AM-1:00 PM. Hilton City Center Denver.
NOVEMBER 6, 2019 RMAG Luncheon. Speaker Max Pommer. “Biochemical and Stratigraphic Controls on Pore-System Evolution, Phosphoria Rock Complex (Permian), Rocky Mountain Region, USA.” Maggiano’s Downtown Denver. NOVEMBER 6, 2019 Oil and Gas Global Network Happy Hour. 4PM-6PM. Liberty Oilfield Services, LLC. Office in Denver, CO.
NOVEMBER 12, 2019 PTTC Rockies Short Course. “Oil and Gas Property Valuation.” CSM, Golden, CO. NOVEMBER 13, 2019 RMAG Rockbuster’s Bash. Denver ChopHouse & Brewery.
NOVEMBER 20, 2019 COGA Member Spotlight Luncheon. NOVEMBER 26, 2019 RMS-SEPM Luncheon. Speaker: Ellen Wilcox. Lecture: “Evolution of Fluvial Deposits in the Mesaverde Group, Uinta Basin: Observations from Detailed Core Facies.” Wynkoop Brewing Co.
COLORADO BORN. COLORADO BUILT. Colorado Committed. WE ARE GREAT WESTERN. WE ARE
#Com�� t� oC�l �a��
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Vol. 68, No. 11 | www.rmag.org
WELCOME NEW RMAG MEMBERS!
Victoria Arnold
lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Jennifer Bartell
is a Geoscience Tech with Extraction Oil and Gas in Denver, Colorado.
Thomas Bown
is a Geologist with Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Kyle Bracken
is a Geologist with Occidental Petroleum in Golden, Colorado.
Benjamin Dellenbach is a geologist and lives in Commerce City, Colorado.
Hannah Durkee
is a Geologist II with EOG Resources in Englewood, Colorado.
Rachel Frohman
lives in Parker, Colorado.
David Morgans
Paul Gagnon
is works at ETX Energy in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Emilie Gentry
works at Maverick Brothers.
Jennifer Livermore
is Director of Business Development with Terra Guidance in Englewood, Colorado.
is a Geologist with BHP in Longmont, Colorado. is President at Central Resources, Inc. in Westminster, Colorado. works at Encana in Denver, Colorado.
Tom Owen
Doug Pethoud Scott Reyman
is a Geophysicist with Solstice Geothermal Consulting LLC in Golden, Colorado.
Kevin Smerud
works at Core Laboratories in Greeley, Colorado.
Dennis McGrane is Owner of McGrane Water Engineering, LLC in Lyons, Colorado.
Sara Stotter
lives in Beachwood, Ohio.
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CALENDAR – NOVEMBER 2019 SUNDAY
MONDAY
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
1
2
RMAG Sporting Clays Tournament.
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
14
15
16
21
22
23
28
29
30
RMAG Luncheon. DIPS Luncheon.
Oil and Gas Global Network Happy Hour.
10
11
12 PTTC Rockies Short Course.
17
18
19
13
RMAG Rockbuster’s Bash.
COGA Annual Meeting, Luncheon, and Expo.
20 COGA Member Spotlight Luncheon.
24
25
26 RMS-SEPM Luncheon.
27
THANKSGIVING DAY RMAG office closed
BLACK FRIDAY RMAG office closed