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Saltwork's professional expertise includes a variety of subsurface skill sets related to carbonate, evaporite, and brine studies. Below are summaries of some of the challenges we have addressed in recent years. If you or your company would like to engage us for any current or future projects, please let us know how we can assist you.
Globigerinid reservoirs, Indonesia
We used a combination of sedimentological logging, thin sections, SEM, wireline, and stable isotope analysis of core and cuttings recovered from variable-quality Late Miocene globigerinid sands. Better-quality reservoirs are internalite deposits with minimal diagenetic alteration. Periodic passage of internal waves (solitons) over otherwise muddy carbonates of the upper slope converted mud-dominant wackestones and mudstones into grain-dominant packstones and grainstones.
Reservoirs accumulated as fairways of cross-bedded foraminiferal sands laid down in mechanically reworked sweet spots. Better-quality sand deposition was focused into submarine-gully-backflow thicks within wave-reworked deeper water swash zones on the upper slope and outer platform. Isotopic analysis of matrix and cement shows minimal post-depositional alteration in these reservoir sands.
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These gullied and channelled globigerinid sand bodies (internalite deposits) are seismically resolvable and cut into bed-parallel sandy slope-parallel reflectors. This seismic signature indicates regions where internal-wave orbitals and swash zones intersected the carbonate slope south of the Madura Ridge (water depths ≈100-300m). It introduces a new, exciting exploration paradigm quantitatively based on a deeper understanding of depositional and diagenetic evolution within a tectonic and climatic framework.
Dallol Potash evaluation, Ethiopia
A study of core and outcrops in the Dallol region of the Danakhil depression, Ethiopia, shows the complexity of potash minerals and their alteration. Previous work failed to differentiate the three main stages and styles of potash precipitation: 1) Primary kainitite associations in the primary textured subaqueous succession, 2) Secondary sylvinite in basin margin phreatic interfaces and 3) Hydrothermal sylvinite associated with geothermally-driven fluids and hydrothermal karst breakouts across the uplifted region in the vicinity of the Dallol Mound. This new understanding better defined the viability of various mining techniques.
Thrust seals in the Amadeus Basin, Australia
Integration of FMI and CAST image logs with conventional wireline-derived mineralogy is used to characterise the halokinetic Bitter Springs evaporites (and equivalents) atop the main regional thrust level.
A new model was constructed from kinetic and tectonic textures that redefine the timing and nature of the brecciated anhydrite and halite levels across much of the basin.
Reservoir slivers in the South Oman salt basin
A comprehensive study of the depositional, diagenetic and halokinetic controls in carbonate-sliver reservoirs encased in the Ara Salt in the South Oman Salt Basin was completed.
The integration of wireline, core, and seismic defined a new model that revealed a new stratigraphy with exploration and development implications at regional and local scales.
John Warren
Principal investigator
John is Saltworks' principal expert and technical coordinator. He has worked in salty systems for over thirty years and divides hisrious SaltWork Consultancy Pte Ltd. projects and modular teaching/research commitments. His interests encompass Wireline Analysis, Carbonate and Evaporite Systems, Economic Geology, lithium from brine and potash exploration and development.
John has written four books on the economic aspects of these topics, contributed chapters covering these topics in several other books, and published more than 60 scientific articles. To access some of these papers, check out the publications section.