Oil and Gas
Oil and Gas | Basin Analysis
Integrated Charge Access Evaluation: The Key to Successful Exploration
Format and Duration:
3 days
5 sessions
Next Event
Location: Virtual
Date:
1st - 5th Dec 2025
Start Time:
14:00 GMT
Event Code: N522a25V
Fee From: GBP £2,725
(exc. Tax)
Charge access considers the journey of the expelled charge from the source rock into the reservoir of the prospect, and is often a critical if not the critical risk in any exploration well. Indeed, very often the seismic interpreters hand over their work at the last minute to the petroleum systems analyst giving no time all for the necessary integration. This integration of the geological framework with the petroleum systems modelling is key to avoiding drilling dry holes. Charge access is complex and many explorers don't fully understand the scientific principles defining it. This course demonstrates the necessity to integrate the basin-wide regional understanding with prospect evaluation principles in order to sensibly quantity resource estimates and risk in any prospect.
Business Impact: Does your company drill numerous failures with no shows? Do you consider faults as the main migration route into your prospect? Do you make complex 3D basin models that don’t predict the next well result? If so, we have a useful course for you!
Feedback
"The course instructors have a lot of experience and show many global case studies covering different aspects of the complexity of Charge Access. A very useful course for people (like me) that need to improve their understanding of charge access."
Schedule
Event Code: N522a25V
Sessions: 5 sessions
Instructors: Leon Dzou, Mark Thompson
Dates:
1st - 5th Dec 2025
Start Time:
14:00 GMT
Location: Virtual
Fee From
GBP £2,725
(exc. Tax)
Good Availability
Please login to book.
Duration and Training Method
This can be taught as either five online webinar sessions (1 week of half day sessions) or a three-day classroom ‘hands-on’ course, with a number of informative exercises designed to get across the principles, punctuated by a series of short talks. There are a rich series of global examples and case histories, taught by two industry experts with over 80 years of experience between them.
Course Overview
Learning Outcomes
Participants will learn to:
- Understand the science that underpins petroleum migration and accumulation.
- Understand the impact of depositional environments, geological models, and critically the role of faults and fractures in migration and trapping.
- Apply the principles to make better predictions of charge access in prospect evaluation and therefore drill fewer dry holes.
- Appreciate a rich variety of case histories from basins worldwide and how they can be applied to your prospect to help reduce risk.
Course Content
The key elements to be discussed will be:
- Organofacies, source rock properties, source potential and distribution
- Genesis of primary biogenic gas accumulations.
- Geological Models (source-carrier-seal systems)
- Migration time lag and migration loss
- Role of faults as migration pathways
- Prospect charge evaluation workflow
- Top seal capacity (column height) evaluation workflow
- Correlation of oils and gases
This has been organised here assuming the course is delivered as 5 online webinar sessions each lasting half a day.
Day 1: Source Rock Potential
- Introduction: Course overview.
- Thermogenic source rock formation.
- Primary biogenic gas system.
- Case history Gulf of Mexico: nature and distribution of the various petroleum systems (organo-facies A and B).
- Exercise: GoM Mensa gas field: did we miss thermogenic oil charge or source rock is absent?
- Exercise: Where are GoM Norphlet fields sourced from?
- Case history Cooper Basin, Australia (organo-facies D/E/F).
Day 2: Geological Models (Source-Carrier-Seal Systems)
- An overview of petroleum secondary migration guiding principles.
- Depositional environments (clastics and carbonate systems).
- Exercise: Zohr gas field, Nile Delta Egypt.
- Case history Pearl River Mouth Basin, South China Sea.
- Exercise: where’s the missing oil charge in southern PRMB?
- Exercise: Liuhua 11-1 field, what are the dominant factors favouring long distance transport of petroleum?
Day 3: Migration and Entrapment
- Focussed v dispersive on a basin scale. Vertically v laterally drained petroleum system.
- Exercise: Alternative models source and seal
- Exercise: Migration blind spots Bintuni Basin, Papua New Guinea
- Case history and discussion of vertically drained petroleum system Marco Polo Field, Gulf of Mexico (charge budget, structural focus, structure relief and seal capacity), also, impact of oil and gas molecules travel time from source rock to first carrier bed and time to fill up the trap.
- Exercise: W Shetlands Basin Palaeocene discoveries.
- Role of faults
- Case history on Thunder Horse.
- Trap configuration concept: evaluation of the capillary sealing capacity of all the seal rocks
- Case history Columbus Basin, offshore Trinidad: use of fault-seal analysis in understanding petroleum migration in a complexly faulted anticlinal trap.
Day 4: Post-Well Evaluation
- Case history Norway and Equatorial Margin.
- Exercise: Catemaco fold belt.
- Case history Brigadier Trend and Ironbark well.
- Exercise: Good luck, Bad luck and Mukluk.
- Case Histories Shows as a smoking gun.
- 3D Petroleum Migration Modelling
- Case History Williston basin: 3D modelling study of the low-permeability petroleum system of the Bakken Formation.
- The use of 3D petroleum migration modelling in exploration, how useful are these models in exploration risking and decision making? 10 minutes discussion.
- Alternative workflow for petroleum migration modelling – thinking processes to draw schematic charge cartoon, and then with appropriate software (percolation modelling).
Day 5: Prospect Charge Analysis
- Impact of DHI’s on charge access risking.
- Exercise: Assess Campeche salt basin exploratory wells charge access risk.
- Charge assessment: procedures for estimating amounts of oil and gas generated, migrated, and trapped in prospects.
- Case history Perdido Trend and Great White field, GOM.
- Exercise: biogenic gas charge assessment.
- Case history Frade and Roncador Fields, Campos Basin.
- Concluding remarks and summary of best practice.
Who Should Attend and Prerequisites
This course is aimed at geoscientists working on basin, play fairway, and prospect evaluation with 5 years or more experience working frontier to mature basins. This is an applied and integrated course involving all geoscience disciplines.
Instructors
Leon Dzou
Background
Dr Leon Dzou works as a Consultant for ADNOC in Abu Dhabi, UAE. He has more than 30 years’ experience with a variety of companies across the spectrum of petroleum systems, with a strong background in geochemistry, source rock depositional environments, petroleum generation and migration, as well as pressure and seal analysis. He has experience of both conventional and unconventional plays across the value chain of Exploration, Development and Production. As well as teaching courses on the Nautilus programme, Leon has been deeply involved in delivering training courses as part of a cohesive exploration capability development programme for a national oil company.
Dr Dzou completed a PhD at the University of Texas at Dallas, with the title ‘Quantitative study of biomarkers in coals and vitrinite concentrates of different maturity and a geochemical study of oils and condensates from K Field, offshore Taiwan’. Most recently, Dr Dzou was a Senior Advisor in Petroleum Systems Analysis with BP and a member of the global Exploration Assurance team. He was passionate about developing discipline health at BP and dedicated a lot of energy to training, advising, and mentoring less experienced petroleum systems specialists and practitioners. He derived great satisfaction from coaching, teaching and generally stimulating staff in the Petroleum Systems arena at BP.
Research interests include generation/expulsion/migration processes, especially secondary migration appears to be the key technical issue, mostly because the movement of petroleum in the subsurface is so poorly understood. Leon believes that young geoscientists should be taught to become skeptics who search for data that does not fit existing paradigms; They must go back to basics and challenge conventional wisdom.
Affiliations and Accreditation
PhD University of Texas at Dallas - Organic Geochemistry
MSc University of Texas at Dallas - Organic Geochemistry
BSc National Taiwan University - Geology
American Association of Petroleum Geologists, USA - Member
Courses Taught
N425: Play Analysis for Targeted Prospect Identification
N491: Play and Prospect Assessment
N522: Integrated Charge Access Evaluation: The Key to Successful Exploration
Mark Thompson
Background
Mark is Director of Lurch Oil Consultation Limited and is an Associate member of RPS Nautilus. As well as teaching courses on the Nautilus programme, Mark has been deeply involved in delivering training courses as part of a cohesive exploration capability development programme for a national oil company.
Mark is from Staffordshire in the British Midlands. He went to Cambridge University 1974 to 1977 to do a Natural Sciences degree, specialising in Geology. Mark joined BP straight out of University and successfully developed a career in both exploration and development geology, attaining the position of Senior Exploration Advisor before leaving BP at the end of 2014. He has been involved in many hydrocarbon discoveries worldwide in numerous basins. He was for many years a global coach in BP, where he prepared and taught many internal courses.
Mark’s career has taken him on many postings including Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia and Norway. His main interests include basin analysis, play fairway and prospect analysis. He has published on a wide variety of topics including alternative explanations for depth dependent stretching, heat flow associated with underplating and play fairway analysis. Interests outside geology include walking and orienteering.
Affiliations and Accreditation
MA University of Cambridge - Natural Science, Geology
Courses Taught
N005: Tectonic Controls on Basin Development and Petroleum Systems
N378: Basin Analysis for Petroleum Geoscientists
N380: Seismic Interpretation Workshop: Play Recognition on Passive Margins
N425: Play Analysis for Targeted Prospect Identification
N477: A Systematic Approach to Defining and Evaluating Stratigraphic and Subtle Combination Traps
N522: Integrated Charge Access Evaluation: The Key to Successful Exploration
Accreditation and Certification
CEU: 2.1 Continuing Education Units
PDH: 21 Professional Development Hours
Certificate: Certificate Issued Upon Completion
RPS is accredited by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) and is authorized to issue the IACET CEU. We comply with the ANSI/IACET Standard, which is recognised internationally as a standard of excellence in instructional practices.
We issue a Certificate of Attendance which verifies the number of training hours attended. Our courses are generally accepted by most professional licensing boards/associations towards continuing education credits. Please check with your licensing board to determine if the courses and certificate of attendance meet their specific criteria.