Sonnenberg, Stephen A.Franklin, Jessica A.2017-09-122022-02-032017-09-122022-02-032017https://hdl.handle.net/11124/171607Includes bibliographical references.2017 Summer.The Upper Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous rocks of the Neuquén province of Argentina have been a known source rock of conventional oil and gas development since the early 1900’s (Leanza et al., 2011). Despite the known resource within the formation, the productive potential of the Vaca Muerta was not discovered until July 2010 by former Repsol-YPF. Based on analogs from the United States unconventional fields, specifically the Bakken and Eagle Ford formations, the Vaca Muerta Formations’ organic richness, kerogen type, favorable thermal maturity window, overpressure, and mineralogy fulfills the criteria for a successful unconventional play. Applying new technologies in horizontal drilling, completions, and production have helped transform the Vaca Muerta Formation from a statistical play to the second largest unconventional, onshore oil and gas development outside of North America. The Neuquén basin is considered relatively underexplored and underdeveloped, with several untapped hydrocarbon pay zones. A detailed study to integrate well-log, seismic, and core data in the Loma Jarillosa Este block will aid in reservoir characterization of the Vaca Muerta Formation. This study was aimed at examining the reservoir properties within the Loma Jarillosa Este area, constructing a three-dimensional geologic model that will show the distribution of the different facies within the Vaca Muerta Formation and their reservoir properties, and to identify and define sweet spots in variations of mineralogy, porosity, permeability, and internal stratigraphy throughout the Loma Jarillosa Este area. This study uses digital logs, core and cutting data, petrographic thin sections, and seismic data. One core was used to calibrate physical properties to digital well logs, and core and cuttings descriptions were used to construct facies maps. In other areas in which seismic and well-log data are available, this study may be applied and reproduced for structural and stratigraphic modeling, sweet spot attributes, and petrophysical models that then may be analyzed to determine the most prospective locations. The study identifies and defines three intervals within the Vaca Muerta from log data and facies interpretations, creating thickness maps, structure maps, and attribute maps throughout the Loma Jarillosa Este area. A three-dimensional (3D) seismic survey was provided by Plus Petrol, the survey was phase shifted, velocity models were created, and a depth conversion was generated using the Petrel software. The data was then used to build a structural geomodel outlining the time generation and trending of the major faults in the area and core data and cuttings description were used to define three lithostratigraphic units within the Vaca Muerta. A correlation between the rock characteristics, well log response, and seismic pattern were observed within the area with slight facies variation. The methodology and results of this study can be used in future data for exploration within the Vaca Muerta Formation and other analogous fields.born digitalmasters thesesengCopyright of the original work is retained by the author.Text