Events & Courses

After carefully considering the impact of the current COVID-19 outbreaks on the conference, the convening committee have reluctantly decided to postpone the conference until March 2021.

The organisers invite contributions within any aspect of geopressure but are particularly interested in the various phases of pore fluid pressure prediction, modelling and overpressure evaluation to manage uncertainty during the life cycle of a well. Suggested themes and sessions include:

• Pore pressure and stress, especially complex stress regimes
• Impact of machine learning on PPFG
• Well engineering and PPFG
• Injecting fluids underground (including CO2)
• Coupling of pore pressure and FG including depletion and closing the drilling window
• Seal capacity and relationship with PPFG
• PPFG issues in mature basins (including abandonment/decommissioning)
• Classic case studies, including Macondo and LUSI mud volcano
• Pore pressure as an exploration and prospectivity tool
• Geopressure in mature basins – lessons learnt
• Pore pressure in active tectonic basins
• Unconventional stress regimes 

Conference programme and additional activities

23 March 2020: Best Practice for PP and FG - Mastery Class

Led by Richard Swarbick 

24 March 2020: Field trip

Led by Richard Swarbrick and Jack Lee to North Yorkshire Coast, GeoPressure in shales - field data and discussion

24 March 2020: Icebreaker reception

There will be an icebreaker reception from 6.30pm the evening before the conference at Durham University. Please can you let Sarah Woodcock know if you would like to attend. 

25-26 March 2020: Conference

Durham University. The Conference provisional conference programme is now available to download. 

25 March 2020: Conference dinner

There will be a conference dinner taking place at Lumley Castle. 

Organising committee

Stuart Jones, Durham University

Nick Pierpoint, GWP Consulting

Richard Swarbrick, Swarbrick GeoPressure Consultancy Limited and Durham University

Scientific programme coordinators

Toby Harrold, Repsol

Tom Sinclair, Shell

Beth Stump, Chevron

Stephen O’Connor, Global Geopressure Advice

Binh Nguyen, JX Nippon

Rick Lahann, Indiana University

Registration

This conference has been postponed until March 2021, and registration is currently closed.

Venue

Durham University is the third oldest University in England and has been a leading European centre for learning for over 1,000 years. Durham has a well-established history of study into high pressure systems through GeoPOP – an internationally recognised multidisciplinary research group funded by the oil and gas industry for over 20 years, and associated research programmes. GeoPressure2020 will be the fourth international conference on this topic held at Durham University (previously in 1995, 2008 and 2015).

The conference venue, the Calman Learning Centre, is in the centre of the science campus at Durham University. It offers state-of-the-art conference facilities and affords excellent views over Durham city and the UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Durham Cathedral and Castle.