Rui Pena Reis

University of Coimbra | UC · Centre for Geosciences

Abstract: Climate changing events underlined by glacial periods are widely documented, from independent criteria and data. The famous Vostok core studies performed by different scientific teams suggests that the CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 600 to 1000 years (800 years for other results) These results are considered for Antart...

Sonia, a young and beautiful academic researcher, makes a surprising discovery during her fieldwork. After a detailed analysis of the find, it was concluded that it was a material body of non-natural and non-human origin, over 450 million years old. The discovery, which immediately raises numerous technical and ontological questions, mobilizes the...

The present article exhibits the achieved results based on the evaluation of two petroleum systems, which compares reservoirs of fluvial environments of sedimentary basins located in the south and north Atlantic, in Brazil (Recôncavo Basin) and in Portugal (Lusitanian Basin), respectively. The main contribution of this study is the survey of the st...

Due to the success of oil and gas production, turbidites have become exploratory targets over the past 40 years in the rift and passive margin basins in the North and South Atlantic. The turbiditic reservoirs in rift and passive margin settings of Atlantic sedimentary basins located in Brazil (Campos Basin) and Portugal (Lusitanian Basin) represent...

Due to the use of structural and seismic techniques an attempt has been made in this study to determine the hydrocarbon potential and future exploration in Pakistan's Lower Indus basin area and offshore region. In addition to the possibility of hydrocarbon accumulation, the major goals of this research are to analyze structural patterns in the subs...

The Salgado and Consolação geosites are located on the Portuguese coast of the West Iberian Margin and represent two Upper Jurassic reference sections of the Amaral Formation interpreted as a barrier-lagoon depositional environment within a mixed carbonate platform context. Outcrops exposure and access conditions allow the detailed study of the suc...

RESUMO Neste trabalho apresenta-se uma resenha das atividades de pesquisa de hidrocarbonetos que ao longo do século XX se desenrolaram na Bacia Lusitânica, realçando a crescente confiança e aposta das empresas, apoiadas pela tecnologia (em particular a prospeção sísmica) e pela contribuição de investigadores nacionais e estrangeiros. Destaca-se pri...

RESUMO Apresenta-se neste trabalho uma visão abrangente do papel que os hidrocarbonetos têm tido e previsivelmente continuarão a ter na nossa sociedade moderna. Essa visão engloba não só as questões energéticas, em sentido estrito, mas também as implicações que a actividade de pesquisa e exploração de hidrocarbonetos tem tido e poderá vir a ter no...

The Amaral Formation has a wide geographic distribution within the Lusitanian Basin, at the western Iberian Margin (Portugal). The different depositional contexts for this unit enabled the distinction of three sectors: lagoon, lagoon-barrier, and marine-distal. The integration of the evolutionary taphonomic analysis of its fossil assemblages with t...

The Baixo Alentejo Flysch Group (BAFG) is an important stratigraphic unit that covers over half of the South Portuguese Zone (SPZ) depositional area, and it is composed by three main tectono-stratigraphic units: the Mértola, Mira, and Brejeira formations. All of these formations contain significant thicknesses of black shales and have several wide...

The development and implementation of appropriate geotourism resources (e.g., field guidebooks, websites, trails, leaflets, and interpretative panels) are technical applications of major importance in geoconservation that highlight the social importance of this emerging geoscience. Scientific research, training, and recreation are activities which...

The use of airborne gamma radiation in hydrocarbon exploration is widely known to define possible areas of microseepage. At this paper, the radiometric survey was applied to identify hydrocarbon anomalies over the South Portuguese Zone (SPZ) unconventional petroleum system. Spectral gamma-ray data were processed to thorium normalization method. Obt...

Regional geophysics research provides for prospect assessment of Timor-Leste, part of the Southeast Asia Archipelago in a region embracing the Banda Arc, Timor Island, and the northwest Australia Gondwana continental margin edge. Timor Island is a microcontinent with several distinct tectonic provinces that developed initially by rifting and d...

The presence of natural hydrocarbon seepage in the surface (soil–water) system can provide strong evidence (pathfinder) of an active petroleum system, as well as critical information on source, maturity and migration pathways. The South Portuguese Zone (SPZ) is located in the southernmost sector of the pre-Mesozoic Iberian Variscan Chain, which is...

Workshop Report on the International Meeting on Paleoclimate: change and adaptation (Coimbra, 2019) - Portugal

PPT presentation

Presented at AAPG ICE Buenos Aires. A broad approach on pre-salt HC plays along the Iberian W. Margin

The continental margin edge of the Western Iberian Margin is marked by the Portuguese rifted sedimentary margin basins. These rifted basins originated from the closure of the Tethys Ocean and opening of the North Atlantic Ocean and they all have similar characteristics. The best known of these basins is the mostly onshore Lusitanian Basin where exp...

The panoply of reasons that may attract people to fossils, which result from the meaning they attribute to these palaeontological objects, may contribute to endangering of the integrity of the fossil record. Semiotics can be of great help to assist geoconservation actions, usually based only on expertise statements, and are of particular relev...

The geological heritage corresponds to expressive representations of earth´s geodiversity over time, thus providing a temporal dimension to nature and extending the nature boundaries to ancient earth processes, as well to outer planetary space in the future.

Foreword Climate is the planetary response of the atmospheric circulation to its changing composition, to the solar system configuration, to the Earth’s rotation and to the oceans’ and continents’ distributions. It displays, as a result, a restless moving pattern, expressed at a global scale by subsiding and uplifting convection cells. These change...

Abstract: The Lusitanian Basin was developed in the western margin of the Iberian plate during the Mesozoic, as a result of a complex rifting process related with the breakup of Pangea and the formation/opening of the Atlantic Ocean. The sedimentary record of the first stage of the rift in the Late Triassic,is made by continental sediments composed...

The Portuguese continental territory is located on the eastern North Atlantic margin, where a W-E atmospheric circulation combined with a dominant N-S oceanic current creates an open wide system, strongly controlled by the oceanic heat distribution. Temperature data are of major relevance to assess regional changes in the region since the mid-1800,...

A geoconservação configura-se, cada vez mais, como uma geociência autónoma no âmbito das Ciências da Terra e do Espaço, cujos objetivos e metodologias, bem como a produção e validação de conhecimento podem ser reconhecidos em meio académico; o conhecimento produzido permite fundamentar a elaboração de materiais e a conceção e implementação de métod...

A geoconservação configura-se, cada vez mais, como uma geociência autónoma no âmbito das Ciências da Terra e do Espaço, cujos objetivos e metodologias, bem como a produção e validação de conhecimento podem ser reconhecidos em meio académico; o conhecimento produzido permite fundamentar a elaboração de materiais e a conceção e implementação de métod...

Field trip to Portugal Study: Source rocks The petroleum system with oil seeps Salt tectonic and its impact on sediments Reservoir developed as turbidites

“Nature” is a polysemic word which has been used since pre-Socratic times with different senses. Within the various uses of the word today, "nature" often refers to geology and wildlife, and excludes in general those things that have not been substantially altered by human intervention, or which persist despite human intervention. Several ongoing i...

This work presents results based on the analysis of gamma radiation data collected at the Aalenian - Bajocian boundary of two reference sections located in the northern sector of the Lusitanian Basin: Murtinheira and Serra da Boa Viagem II. Specifically, it aims at: 1) characterizing the variation trends of the total gamma ray log and of the spectr...

The Lusitanian Basin (Central Portugal) is a recurring subject of study within different disciplines of Earth Sciences, mainly because of the excellent stratigraphical and paleontological record, as well as the world class quality of outcropping elements of petroleum systems and salt tectonics geometries. In fact, in the Lusitanian Basin three glob...

The South Portuguese Zone (SPZ) is located in the southernmost sector of the pre-Mesozoic Iberian Variscan Chain, which is composed by Carboniferous interbedded shales and greywackes, with commonly low-grade metamorphism. Previous works about organic maturation support that Palaeozoic units are mostly over-mature, thus discarding any hydrocarbon ge...

OFFICIAL PROGRAMME, AAPG - Europe Region Conference, LISBON-2018 "GLOBAL ANALOGUES OF THE ATLANTIC MARGIN" The Atlantic Province is a large, heterogeneous and prolific group of margins and basins. At the same time, it is one of the most eloquent examples of a rift-related and present-day set of passive continental margins. Looking globally, the Atl...

Field trip Guide for a 1 day overview of piercing diapiric structures at the Lusitanian Basin.

The Western Iberian Margin is marked by two major adjacent basins, the mostly onshore Lusitanian Basin and the mostly deep-water Peniche Basin, originated during the opening of the North Atlantic Ocean and separated by an elongated basement high. The Triassic rifting siliciclastic infill is capped by thick Norian to Hettangian continental and coast...

The focus area is located along Beja and Faro districts (southwestern of Portugal), where the Baixo Alentejo Flysch Group exists, is composed of the Mértola, Mira, and Brejeira Formations. The aim of this article is to characterize the groundwater contamination by toluene, one of the petroleum products that may originate from natural petroleum syst...

Taphonomic analysis of coquinas (Morro do Chaves and Amaral Formations) and their relationships in the definition of the permo-porous properties of reservoirs analogous to the pre-salt of Brazil

Geological Heritage and Geoconservation

Public understanding of geosciences

“Research in action, knowledge in progress” represents the material record of the diversity and intensity of the scientific innovation currently going on at the CGEO and intends to put together the wide open work of different people, in different institutions. Moreover, it intends to prove the fertility of a 3D cluster of issues and people look...

The Northeast Atlantic is a well-known petroleum province, including some of the most prolific Atlantic areas, intensively explored and productive along the coasts of the UK and Norway. However, more towards the South, the Irish and Celtic Seas, and the Western Iberian Margin, only recently witnessed increasing interest and its potential is yet to...

ICE Field Trips Provide Rare Opportunity

Reservoir units are usually identified and characterized based on their seismic imaging, trying to extract geological and petrophysical properties from geophysical large-scale and low-resolution attributes. The access to outcropping real-scale analogues is therefore a crucial tool for such approaches and to improve the accuracy of the interpretatio...

Os derrames naturais de hidrocarbonetos (oil seeps) permitem frequentemente inferir a existência de uma rocha reservatório em profundidade e, como tal, a geração de hidrocarbonetos. A ocorrência de oil seeps é também a expressão da existência de caminhos de migração que permite a ascensão de hidrocarbonetos até à superfície. Em Portugal a geração d...

A investigação em geoconservação, enquanto estratégia de adaptação humana, representa uma das atividades estruturantes do Centro de Geociências (CGEO). A geoconservação configura-se, cada vez mais, como uma geociência autónoma no âmbito das Ciências da Terra e do Espaço, cujos objetivos e metodologias, bem como a produção e validação de conheciment...

A dependência da União Europeia em energias fósseis tem vindo a aumentar desde 1990, apesar da diminuição do seu peso realativo no consumo. Portugal apresenta, para 2018, uma dependência energética da ordem de 70%, incluídas as fontes renováveis (19% do total). Num cenário optimista, essa dependência baixará para 65% em 2030. Esta realidade, pre...

The continental edge of the Western Iberian Margin is marked by two contrasting basins, the mostly onshore Lusitanian Basin and the mostly deepwater Peniche Basin. These two rift basins were originated during the opening of the North Atlantic Ocean and have similar characteristics and are geographically separated by an elongated basement high that...

The SPZ is located in the southernmost sector of the pre-Mesozoic Iberian Variscan Chain, which is composed by upper Paleozoic shales and greywackes (interbedded), of low grade metamorphism. Previous works based on organic maturation support that SPZ Carboniferous units are mostly over-mature, thus discarding any hydrocarbon generation potential. H...

The relation between gamma radiation and light spectrum has not been well studied over the past years. The most part of the few works address the issue in a " space science " context. This work aims to establish this relation using airborne gamma radiation and WorldView-2 (WV-2) images, applied over an area with 1000 km2 in the South Portuguese Zon...

Deepwater Interpretation; Continental Margin Basins ; Salt Tectonics and Basins without Salt

The relatively well-studied Lusitanian Basin in coastal west-central Portugal can be used as an analogue for the less well-known Peniche Basin in the deep offshore. In this paper the Lusitanian Basin is reviewed in terms of stratigraphy, sedimentology, evolution and petroleum systems. Data comes from published papers and technical reports as well a...

Field presentation of the oldest known asphaltic mine in the Lusitanian Basin, Portugal

The Aalenian – Bajocian boundary was logged for the first time at the Murtinheira (Bajocian GSSP) and the Serra da Boa Viagem II sections, located in the Lusitanian Basin (West Central Portugal) using a portable gamma ray spectrometer, and well calibrated with the ammonite-based biostratigraphical zonation. These two coeval outcrops are represented...

This study reassesses the evolution and petroleum potential of Porto Basin, based on Basin and Petroleum Systems modeling to evaluate the margin maturity and complemented with new insights in the prediction of lithology variations on the unexplored deep offshore area, consequently contributing to the future hydrocarbon exploration. The Meso-Cenozoi...

The South Portuguese Zone (SPZ) is located in the southernmost sector of the pre-Mesozoic Iberian Variscan Chain, which is composed by moderate to highly deformed Palaeozoic rocks, of low-grade metamorphism. Analytical data show wide areas with significant average organic carbon content (TOC) and thermal maturation values within hydrocarbons genera...

This work deals with the analysis of Landsat 8 imagery which have allowed the design of a geological mapping of the different units outcropping in the South Portuguese Zone (Beja-Acebuches Ofiolitic Complex, Pulo do Lobo Antiform, Iberian Pyrite Belt and Baixo Alentejo Flysch Group) and their surrounding units (plutonitic rocks of the Ossa Morena Z...

PRESENTATION OUTLINE 1. PORTUGAL, AN ATLANTIC MARGIN WITH SEDIMENTARY BASINS AND HYDROCARBONS ? 2. PETROLEUM SYSTEMS IN PORTUGUESE BASINS 3. THE KNOWLEDGE AND VISION OF UNIVERSITIES a) Accumulated Knowledge b) Main R&D Focus c) Advanced Academic Training d) Research Projects with Industry (examples) e) Field-Trips f) Organization of International...

A brief aproach on stratigraphic geometries

Power point presentation in Statoil internal meeting

The sedimentology of continental deposits. Two examples of Upper Cretaceous-Miocene of Portugal. PhD Thesis

ABSTRACT The use of remote sensing in hydrocarbons exploration is already widely known, especially with regard to the identification of structures with potential for traps formation. But beyond this purpose, the remote sensing may also be used for the detection of potential areas for hydrocarbon microseepages on the surface (assisting the character...

ABSTRACT: This works aims to assess the exploration potential of shale gas concentrations, based on the processing and interpretation of gamma radiation data (thorium, uranium and potassium) recorded by airborne radiometric survey, in Mértola, Mira and Brejeira Formations. These formations, mostly composed by shaly and sandy turbidites, outcrop in...