John Warren
Hello
I'm the evaporite expert in the SaltWork Consultancy Adelaide. In terms of a home address, I split my time between the coastal region of Adelaide and downtown Bangkok. I have spent more than 30 years consulting to petroleum and minerals industries, and training some people who now work in these industries. I hold a doctorate from Flinders University of South Australia and am also a graduate of the University of Adelaide,
SaltWork Consultants
Senior executive: 2012 - present
I am a senior executive in the SaltWork Consultancy, where my focus is on training and mentoring across various but inter-related technical aspects of saline geosystems. I also work as an on-site consultant, dealing directly with various evaporites, saline geosystems, reservoirs, and mine geology.
Home base for SaltWork is Kingston Park, where the sunsets can be spectacular.
Chulalongkorn University
Professor, Petroleum Geoscience
2008-2021
Most of my time at Chula was spent in postgraduate teaching or research in the rock-based analysis of well-logs and seismic, rock property geology, and applied aspects of modern and ancient carbonate and evaporite geosystems.
The rest of my time in Thailand was spent enjoying the traffic in Bangkok.
Sultan Qaboos University, Oman
Professor, Shell Chair
2006-2008
A delightful two years helping design a Petroleum Geology program for the university. In my spare time, I enjoyed experiencing the geology and rich culture of Oman.
Earlier in my career
1980-2005
Before 2006, I was a contract Professor at Universiti Brunei Darussalam. In the mid-1990s, in a former life as a full-time bureaucrat, I was Professor of Petroleum Geology and Director of the Key Centre for Resource Exploration in the School of Applied Geology at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. In the 1980s and early 90s, I was a faculty member of the University of Texas at Austin and the National Centre of Petroleum Geology and Geophysics in Adelaide.
Downtown Perth, Australia
Technical expertise
Saline hydrocarbon and metal systems are characterised by interwoven associations of fluid crossflows, salt alteration and carbonate porosity evolution. These subsurface overprints are generally less intense in siliciclastic sediments. Still, productive geometries in a sandstone reservoir can be complicated, especially if tied to the coming and going of saline cements. Much reservoir or ore quality in these systems is not a response to depositional geometries but to the timing of multistage diagenetic overprints.
Skills
Rock properties
Saline hydrocarbon and metal systems are characterised by interwoven associations of fluid crossflows, salt alteration and carbonate porosity evolution. These subsurface overprints are generally less intense in siliciclastic sediments. Still, productive geometries in a sandstone reservoir can be complicated, especially if tied to the coming and going of saline cements.
Much reservoir or ore quality in these systems is not a response to depositional geometries, but to the timing of multistage diagenetic overprints. Understanding this complexity requires more than a basic knowledge of the depositional setting, sequence stratigraphy, or primary geometries.
Wireline
In a sealing salt unit, we are dealing mostly with intervals that are mono- or bimineralic and so interpreting wireline response in evaporite seals is relatively straightforward. A porosity effect is rare in the log signatures of salt masses. Interpreting the impact of the evolving porosities in the associated carbonate reservoir is much less so. Total gamma values are often poor differentiators of rock type in saline geosystems.
Reliably interpreting a density, neutron or sonic log for porosity (storage) prediction or understanding the volumetrics of fluid distribution responses in electric logs and reliably applying Archies Law requires an understanding of the interwoven associations of fluid crossflows, salt alteration and carbonate porosity evolution.
Seismic
The unique drawdown nature of thick evaporite deposition requires a hydrology where there is no surface connection to the ocean. This modifies many of the underlying assumptions of seismic stratigraphic interpretation.
Once deposited in a plate-tectonically defined position in earth-space, many giant salt masses flow, and as they flow to construct a predictable series of evolving stratigraphic and structural traps. In many cases, this requires seismic interpretation of diagenetic overprints on depositional geometries.
Understanding aquifer evolution across time while the sediment is in the subsurface and its structural evolution, are necessary skills.
Fear of large cats
Notice in the photo that I am not sitting at the business end of this beautiful two year-old male tiger.
Trainer
Evaporite systems
All the course modules are designed to give the participants an understanding of how various subsurface salts, carbonates and brines are useful predictive tools that, when correctly applied, provide a better focus to exploration and development efforts.
Carbonate Reservoir Systems
The course focuses on reservoir quality and its subsurface prediction. To understand the unique nature of wireline indicators in various carbonates, the participant must first gain a rock-based understanding of depositional and diagenetic evolution, within a tectonic and climatic framework.