Structural Diagenesis Initiative secures major new funding

November 13, 2006

AUSTIN, Texas—The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) has awarded the Structural Diagenesis Initiative, a research program at the Jackson School, more than $750,000 to continue its award-winning research for another three years. The initiative, which began with support from the Jackson School and a matching BES grant, won praise early on, earning a “best University research” award from DOE in 2004 and spawning a distinguished lecture tour.

Steve Laubach, a senior research scientist at the Bureau of Economic Geology who is lead principal investigator on the project, collaborates with co-PI’s Peter Eichhubl, Rob Lander and Linda Bonnell (all at the Bureau), Jon Olson (Department of Petroleum & Geosystems Engineering) and Randy Marrett (Department of Geological Sciences).

The research strives to further the understanding of how fracture and fault growth and chemical diagenetic processes interact to govern the attributes of structures in the Earth. Laubach sees great potential: “The best science is yet to come in this area. There are many exciting research leads with important societal implications.”

Graduate students make significant contributions to the initiative, including these current and recent examples:

• Meghan Ward completed a study of the structural diagenetic evolution of fractured Jurassic sandstones in northeastern Mexico. Meghan’s mapping of microstructures within fractures is the basis for unprecedented insights into fracture opening rates and timing, in many ways the ‘holy grail’ of fracture analysis. “What attracted me to the project was the fact that combining structure and diagenesis was a field that was new and developing,” said Ward. “I felt that it would be great to take on a project that was not commonly studied and hopefully make a contribution to its progress.”
   
• Kira Diaz-Tushman’s master’s thesis work in northwest Scotland uses structural diagenesis to unravel a hitherto unknown part of the tectonic history of this classic region. She has also demonstrated that this area is a remarkable outcrop analog for unconventional tight gas sandstone reservoirs. There is enormous potential for future work in this area as a guide for developing and calibrating seismic methods to characterize fractures.
   
• Leonel Gomez studies spatial arrangement of fractures in the context of structural diagenesis. His main field area is in the mountains of northeastern Mexico, where he studied fractures and diagenesis of Cretaceous Cupido dolostones. Gomez along with his advisor Marrett and collaborator Julia Gale have made a significant breakthrough by devising a new method to characterize the spatial arrangement of fractures.
   
• Aysen Ozkan is undertaking a structural diagenesis study of the Piceance and Uinta basins of Colorado and Utah, among the most important natural gas producing basins in the continental U.S. Her work with the Bureau of Economic Geology’s Lander and Eichhubl has already demonstrated that structural diagenetic processes govern how fracture patterns evolve in this area.

The cover of the April 2006 Journal of Petroleum Geology spotlighted the group’s work, showing Diaz-Tushman’s field area in Scotland and images from student research by Ward and Gomez in Mexico and West Texas. The issue included an article by Laubach and Julia Gale on “Obtaining fracture information for low-permeability (tight) gas sandstones from sidewall cores.”

For information on the Structural Diagenesis Initiative, contact Steve Laubach, 512-471-6303.

For more information about the Jackson School, contact J.B. Bird at jbird@jsg.utexas.edu, 512-232-9623.