On-Shore Petroleum Day

After a fun night of sisterly bonding, and a hearty breakfast, we met our two guides for the day. Xavier and Ibrahim are both from the University of the West Indies and representatives from Touchstone. They showed us a detailed drone elevation model of the Papiaro mud volcano that we had visited the previous day. They also mapped the subsurface using resistivity and conductivity methods.

We then walked down the road from our hotel to visit Naparima Hill. Along the way we visited an oil seep and an active displacement along the fault that trends from the hill toward the Papiaro Volcano. Fortunately our bus driver picked us up along the way and drove us the remainder of the distance to the top. It’s proposed that Naparima Hill is an anticline that was further uplifted by transpression along the fault. It is the only unit in western Trinidad that contains Creatacous age sediment.

From the top we could see a nice view of San Fernando city below, and all of its refineries.

From there we traveled north to start a traverse where we would follow a seismic profile along which several wells had been drilled. Xavier and Ibrahim used these stops to explain how to interpolate seismic sections and surface lithology.

Many of these outcrops showed oil seepage. We learned how these source rocks fed into structural and stratigraphic traps that created oil bearing layers which have been exploited for oil for decades. Below Zafir is demonstrating a common technique for identifying oil-rich rocks (sniffing them).

We stopped for lunch at the Royal Chicken restaurant. We then held a geologic discussion within the seating area. We got a few odd stares from the other patrons but we were unphased.

We then visited an operating oil pump and walked over to a nearby oil-bearing sandstone deposit. We discovered trough cross-bedding and deltaic deposits suggesting a prior fluvial environment. This area had also been quarried at the surface.

Our last stop of the day was to the Digity Mud Volcano that we all climbed into. Although it is not very active at the moment, this is the tallest mud volcano in Trinidad. We almost lost Ed and Adam but we managed to pull them out.

A special thank you to Xavier and Ibrahim from and for the sponsorship by TouchStone. Thank you for helping make this trip happen and for sharing your knowledge with us!

- Chantal and Joy