Blaise Fernandes

PhD student - Geo

Biography

Blaise Fernandes is a PhD candidate at the ASP and is working on Deepwater Sedimentation Outcrop Analogues in the Donkey Bore Syncline, Flinders Ranges, South Australia.

He obtained his Bachelor's degree in Geology, followed with a Master's degree in Geology from the Goa University in the early 90s.

He did a stint for the K. S. Council for Science & Technology as Project Scientist before joining the Department of Marine Sciences and Marine Biotechnology in a similar position, on a Govt. of India project on geological and geochemical limnology for three years, where he was then a Senior Research Fellow.

He subsequently engaged in research in estuarine and shelf zone sedimentation with regard to Land Ocean interactions and climate change for a couple of years before working as an Oilfield geologist in India and Asia-Pacific region. After a few more years as a geotechnical and environmental consultant on home ground he moved to Australia and embarked on the present research.

He is a member of AAPG, PESA and SPE.

Research Project

Deepwater Sedimentation Outcrop Analogues of a Salt Withdrawal Mini Basin Fill - Donkey Bore Syncline, Northern Flinders Ranges, Australia.

Supervisors: Tobi Payenberg, Simon. Lang (Woodside)

Project support: Deepwater ARC Grant

Scholarship support: Australian Postgraduate Award and Deepwater ARC Grant

Project Description

Outcrop analogues are becoming increasingly important in the approach to understanding the origin, deposition and consolidation of sedimentary deposits. Their relevance to hydrocarbon exploration makes it all the more imperative to be able to effectively use analogues to understand these types of deposits, particularly deepwater deposits, many aspects of which are poorly understood.

The proposed study is focused on an outcropping area of significant geologic structure and sedimentation, having been deposited contemporaneously adjacent to active salt diapirism. Field studies are to be carried out in the area and data generated to be used to better understand the depositional characteristics particularly with respect to their influence on reservoir compartmentalisation.

This work may contribute to an understanding of predicting reservoir heterogeneity, a difficult factor to characterize with subsurface data sets, and spatial distribution of deepwater sediments adjacent to a salt diapir.

It is currently the only known outcropping deepwater basin in such a tectonic setting world wide and therefore is globally significant, specially in petroleum exploration which commonly requires to be model driven in predicting deepwater silicilastic distribution patterns.

Blaise is part of the research group RARG (Reservoir Analogues Research Group)