Acadia Geology Student Goes to Trinidad
Luke Marshall, a third-year Geology major, visited Trinidad to learn more about the petroleum industry.
The Caroni Delta Tour, depth sounding the channel morphology. Photo credit: Anne Belanger
The Petroleum Geoscience Field Methods course led by Dr. Grant Wach of Dalhousie University embarked on an annual field trip to Trinidad during Study Break 2010 to study the petroleum systems of the Trinidad basins fed by the Caroni Delta. The trip was mainly sponsored by Nova Scotia Department of Energy and Shell, with supporting funding from Petrotrin, BP T&T, Imperial Oil, Ten Degrees North, and comprised of ten students from Dalhousie University, and one student from each of Acadia, St. Mary’s, and St. Francis Xavier Universities. Trinidad has been active in oil and gas exploration/production for nearly a century. Areas of study included: oil seeps, exposed oil reservoirs, the Pitch Lake, mud volcanoes, offshore drill cores, and deltaic depositional outcrops containing linked delta top, delta front and prodelta facies successions. These outcrops are analogous to the basins offshore Nova Scotia and provide an invaluable resource for students to conduct basin/reservoir research.