Queensland’s June technical lunch saw local stalwart David Lowry presenting his work on the structural restoration and maturity modelling of the Eromanga Basin.
David’s long-lived career has seen him work as a field geologist for Geological Survey WA, as a well site geologist, and as an exploration geologist for WAPET, Lasmo, Sagasco and Origin Energy. He now consults from his home in the bush.
The work he presented built on his previous APPEA paper (Lowry and Evans, 2011) focussed on new exploration concepts for the Eromanga Basin. After an introduction to the study area, the talk moved on to sonic logs as a tool for estimating erosion. The audience were invited to vote for how much missing section each sonic log reflected. Generally they did pretty well in estimating the right amount! Using these estimates of missing section, the geometry of the study area during the Cretaceous, at the time of peak oil generation, was proposed. This enabled source kitchen and migration routes to be identified at odds with the present day geometry of the basin.
The 50-strong crowd enjoyed a delicious steak lunch before challenging David with a few pertinent questions, including the implications of different types of heat flow to the proposed model, and why wells targeting Permian sediments to the north of the study area were not apparently on the migration pathway.
The July technical talk is a joint event with the AEGC and sees a return to the successful evening format.
