4. Deltaic reservoir analogues from central Utah (Howell et al.)

This virtual fieldtrip illustrates the utilization of outcrops and VOs to build geometrically accurate geocellular models that have been used to address oilfield production challenges at a variety of scales. VOs from two Cretaceous deltaic units, the Panther Tongue sandstone and the Ferron Sandstone that crop out in the northern Book Cliffs and the San Rafael Swell, are presented. This involved creating a large-scale VO covering 10 000 km² from publicly available DEM and aerial photo data. This was used to build a geocellular model that captures the very large-scale stratigraphic architecture of the Mesaverde Group clastic wedge, including the Panther Tongue and Ferron sandstones. Detailed lidar studies of selected outcrops from the Panther Tongue and Ferron Sandstone have captured the detail of individual delta front clinothems and bedsets. The data have been used to capture statistics that describe clinothem bed thickness and downdip bed thinning trends. The VOs have also been used as the basis for a series of geocellular models that were flow-simulated to investigate the effects of shale-draped clinoforms as barriers in deltaic reservoirs.