Blog icon

Dr Lionel Esteban

Petrophysicist

https://people.csiro.au/E/L/Lionel-Esteban

Contact

Please enter a valid first name

Please enter a valid last name

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter your message to send to the contact

Biography

Lionel Esteban worked on 3D magnetic and fluid flow properties (experimental and modelling) of the French deep underground shales in the Paris basin for nuclear wastes repository during his PhD at the French universities of Toulouse, Strasbourg and Institut de Physique du Globe of Strasbourg. He then went to the Geological Survey of Canada (Victoria/Vancouver, British Columbia) for his 2.5 years post-doctorate to work on petrophysics and mineralogy of offshore and onshore gas hydrates cores all over the world to understand their mechanisms of formation and spatial distribution.
Lionel Esteban is currently a petrophysicist at CSIRO (Perth, WA) in the Energy business unit since July 2009. He develops and tests petrophysical experimental laboratory approaches and combine them to logs analysis to characterize and understand the physical properties responses of unconventional (shales, coal, tight gas) and conventional reservoirs (sandstone and carbonates) using: electrical, magnetic, electro-magnetic, thermal and fluid flow methods under (or not) HP/HT. His main focus are on: Energy and new energy analysis and development, and full integration of rock physical and chemical properties from small scale (nm) to reservoir scale (km).
His strong interactions with industry and universities led to develop new capabilities (NMR, X-ray CT imaging, joint electric-ultrasonic core flooding systems and relative permeability core flooding under HP/HT) and reinforce others capabilities across the other teams/groups at CSIRO. Strengthened by these integrability of various disciplines from a laboratory scale to well scale to modelling/reservoir scale, Lionel Esteban is able to collaborate with national institutions/companies such as ANU, UWA, ANLEC, Curtin University, Marine Center, Corelab service company, petroleum and mineral industries (BHP billiton, NAGRA, BG, BP, Petrobras, Petronas, Woodside, Chevron, Total, Saudi-ARAMCO, Buru-Energy...to name a few). But also with international entities such as European Universities (French, Germany, Italy…) or Universities from USA, NZ, Japan, South Korea […]. All of these local/national/international interactions allowed to grow in reputation and quality of the science to deliver in the CSIRO strategic alignment, providing numerous contracts, service works, research project partnerships, commercial research projects ( 200) and multiple peer-reviewed papers ( 43), conference papers (70) and invited to international workshops and conferences. His petrophysics capabilities also attract many students over the years from all over the world supervising more than 35 post-graduate students and 8 PhD, currently supervising a PhD student from France and involved in international research project (ultra-low permeability benchmarking, IODP-Nankai Through, National Geosequestration Laboratory).

Current Roles

  • Laboratory Manager
    Petrophysics

  • Supervisor & Manager
    Medical XCT facility from NGL

  • Manager
    Multi-Sensor Core Logger facility

Academic Qualifications

  • 2006

    PhD
    University of Toulouse and Institut de Physique du Globe of Strasbourg

  • 2003

    MSc
    University of Toulouse

Professional Experiences

  • 2006-2009

    Post-doctorate in Gas Hydrates
    Geological Survey of Canada

  • 2003-2006

    Research assistant and lecturer at the university of Toulouse and Strasbourg in physics, geology and petrophysics (B.Sc/M.Sc, Earth Sciences). Supervision of 5 graduate and master students for research internships.
    University of Toulouse

  • 2002-2002

    Research assistant on the field to sample granites in UK and characterize the structures on the field and the magnetic properties in the lab.
    University of Toulouse

Community and Corporate Citizenship

  • 2018-2018

    Supporter and Ally of the LGBTI Community