Petrophysics Summer School 2019

The 2019 Petrophysics Summer School participants and tutors (credit: Colin Brooks Photography)

The 6-day course running from the 30th of June to the 5th of July 2019 aimed to build on the success and participant feedback from the previous three years. Retaining historically popular course elements, the 2019 petrophysics summer school maintained variety in the delivery of teaching through lectures and practicals; computer and paper-based.

Course participants were introduced to petrophysics fundamentals in the petrophysics 101 course before being able to visit real life tools at Weatherford, and get hands-on with recovered core at the British Geological Survey (BGS) Core Store during the mid-week fieldtrip. After being given the opportunity to see what is measured (and how) in order to produce data, participants were able to implement their fundamentals training on real IODP expedition data during two days of training in Schlumberger’s Techlog software package. Additional time was also given at the end of the week in the Techlog free session – an opportunity for participants to bring their own data and put their new Techlog skills to the test alongside tutors and helpers.

Scattered throughout the week were many more additional sessions including (but not limited to) talks and practical sessions on offshore operations, estimating in-place hydrocarbon volumes, acoustic processing, borehole-seismic integration, and an opportunity to play with physical properties equipment including a Geotek core-logger. Part of the Summer School also included a mini conference with posters and short “elevator pitches”.

Alongside intense days of teaching the Petrophysics Summer School also included a variety of social events throughout the weeks evening’s – with a talk on the local geology at the New Walk museum drinks reception, pizza in Leicester’s idyllic Botanical Gardens, and local Leicester delights at an award-winning local curry house.

As in previous years, the course accommodated a varied demographic representing 11 nationalities across the 27 participants and with female participants in the majority at 59%. With general statistics comparable to previous years, one new aspect to the 2019 participant cohort was the number of graduate and masters-level attendees at 26%. The remainder of the participant pool resembled past Summer Schools with the majority of attendees joining mid-PhD, but also with several post-doctoral researchers and a few from other global research bodies and private sector positions.

The teaching pool for the Summer School consisted of 13 instructors from both academia (European Petrophysics Consortium (EPC), Imperial College London, Lamont‐Doherty Earth Observatory, Mare3-Japan, and the University of Leicester) and industry (BP (UK) and Schlumberger Information Systems) - providing varied and global coverage alongside extensive experience.

All in all a great week, well received.