GAC® National Medals & Awards
W.W. Hutchison Medal
W.W. Hutchison Medallist –
Octavian Catuneanu
Citation
Sequence stratigraphy is an essential methodology of basin analysis and petroleum geology that now provides the basis for description, classification and interpretation of sedimentary rocks, be they from Precambrian or the Present. This discipline has been an essential component of petroleum practice since the 1970s, but has been hampered by an ever expanding list of controversies regarding definitions and procedures. In the last few years, Octavian Catuneanu has become established as one of the world’s leading practitioners of this field, and has almost single-handedly brought consensus to the stratigraphic community and provided direction to the development of methods and standards. Using his grasp of the theoretical and practical aspects of the subject, coupled with his unstoppable determination and diplomatic management of controversy, he has charted a course which should soon result in sequence stratigraphy taking its rightful place as part of the formal architecture of modern stratigraphy.
Octavian’s book “Principles of sequence stratigraphy” (Elsevier, 2006) is a masterly combination of theory and practice that has rapidly become the standard textbook for students and practitioners, and has been on the publisher’s best-seller list for three years. Concurrently and importantly, Octavian has taken a leading role in the drive to formalize sequence methods with his work on the North American Commission on Stratigraphy and, since 2008, as Chair of the Task Group on Sequence Stratigraphy working under the auspices of the International Sub commission on Stratigraphic Classification. He was the leader of a large and diverse group of geologists from around the world who published a ground-breaking article on sequence stratigraphic practice in Earth Science Reviews in 2009. Additionally, because of the clarity of his ideas, Octavian has become a popular short-course instructor. His first course was in South Africa in 1999. His first course in Canada was in 2002, and since then he has given short courses and consulted literally worldwide.
Octavian has brought to the problem precisely the right scientific and technical skills to explore the theory and practice of sequence stratigraphy, and is blessed with the right personality to achieve compromise and agreement amongst a disparate group of scientists in the oil industry, in universities, and some government survey offices, many of them with giant egos! To make progress it has been necessary to be skilled in numerical stratigraphic modeling and the quantitative basis of basin subsidence and sedimentation, to have wide experience in the field in both outcrop and subsurface studies involving high-quality reflection-seismic data, and to be able to perform as a diplomat at scientific meetings, in correspondence, and in joint publications, in which international agreement on procedures and standards is being laboriously achieved. Octavian has all of these skills, in a unique combination, without which, I suggest, progress would be negligible.