Unravelling an abandoned giant in Central Luconia Province, offshore Sarawak, Malaysia — Success story of Lang Lebah

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (8) ◽  
pp. 566-573
Author(s):  
Aqilah Amir Jamalullail ◽  
Ong Swee Keong ◽  
Nik Ruzaimi Akmal Nik Ruhadi ◽  
Tengku Mohd Syazwan Tengku Hassan ◽  
Detchai Ittharat ◽  
...  

In 1994, two exploration wells were drilled consecutively to explore for gas prospectivity in Lang Lebah, a Miocene carbonate buildup in the geologic province of Central Luconia located in the Sarawak Basin in Malaysia. High overpressure and operational problems prevented both wells from fully evaluating the target. Postdrill analysis concluded that Lang Lebah has limited potential due to poor reservoir quality, small gas column, and challenging drilling conditions. For these reasons, it was left dormant for 25 years. In 2016, new 3D broadband seismic acquisition and megamerge reprocessing of 3D seismic data sets followed by an integrated application of multidisciplinary workflows successfully derisked key petroleum system elements of the Lang Lebah structure, yielding a more optimistic view of its potential. A new well was justified at Lang Lebah and resulted in one of the major gas discoveries of 2019.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-69
Author(s):  
Marwa Hussein ◽  
Robert R. Stewart ◽  
Deborah Sacrey ◽  
Jonny Wu ◽  
Rajas Athale

Net reservoir discrimination and rock type identification play vital roles in determining reservoir quality, distribution, and identification of stratigraphic baffles for optimizing drilling plans and economic petroleum recovery. Although it is challenging to discriminate small changes in reservoir properties or identify thin stratigraphic barriers below seismic resolution from conventional seismic amplitude data, we have found that seismic attributes aid in defining the reservoir architecture, properties, and stratigraphic baffles. However, analyzing numerous individual attributes is a time-consuming process and may have limitations for revealing small petrophysical changes within a reservoir. Using the Maui 3D seismic data acquired in offshore Taranaki Basin, New Zealand, we generate typical instantaneous and spectral decomposition seismic attributes that are sensitive to lithologic variations and changes in reservoir properties. Using the most common petrophysical and rock typing classification methods, the rock quality and heterogeneity of the C1 Sand reservoir are studied for four wells located within the 3D seismic volume. We find that integrating the geologic content of a combination of eight spectral instantaneous attribute volumes using an unsupervised machine-learning algorithm (self-organizing maps [SOMs]) results in a classification volume that can highlight reservoir distribution and identify stratigraphic baffles by correlating the SOM clusters with discrete net reservoir and flow-unit logs. We find that SOM classification of natural clusters of multiattribute samples in the attribute space is sensitive to subtle changes within the reservoir’s petrophysical properties. We find that SOM clusters appear to be more sensitive to porosity variations compared with lithologic changes within the reservoir. Thus, this method helps us to understand reservoir quality and heterogeneity in addition to illuminating thin reservoirs and stratigraphic baffles.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Bellwald ◽  
Sverre Planke ◽  
Sunil Vadakkepuliyambatta ◽  
Stefan Buenz ◽  
Christine Batchelor ◽  
...  

<p>Sediments deposited by marine-based ice sheets are dominantly fine-grained glacial muds, which are commonly known for their sealing properties for migrating fluids. However, the Peon and Aviat hydrocarbon discoveries in the North Sea show that coarse-grained glacial sands can occur over large areas in formerly glaciated continental shelves. In this study, we use conventional and high-resolution 2D and 3D seismic data combined with well information to present new models for large-scale fluid accumulations within the shallow subsurface of the Norwegian Continental Shelf. The data include 48,000 km<sup>2</sup> of high-quality 3D seismic data and 150 km<sup>2</sup> of high-resolution P-Cable 3D seismic data, with a vertical resolution of 2 m and a horizontal resolution of 6 to 10 m in these data sets. We conducted horizon picking, gridding and attribute extractions as well as seismic geomorphological interpretation, and integrated the results obtained from the seismic interpretation with existing well data.</p><p>The thicknesses of the Quaternary deposits vary from hundreds of meters of subglacial till in the Northern North Sea to several kilometers of glacigenic sediments in the North Sea Fan. Gas-charged, sandy accumulations are characterized by phase-reserved reflections with anomalously high amplitudes in the seismic data as well as density and velocity decreases in the well data. Extensive (>10 km<sup>2</sup>) Quaternary sand accumulations within this package include (i) glacial sands in an ice-marginal outwash fan, sealed by stiff glacial tills deposited by repeated glaciations (the Peon discovery in the Northern North Sea), (ii) sandy channel-levee systems sealed by fine-grained mud within sequences of glacigenic debris flows, formed during shelf-edge glaciations, (iii) fine-grained glacimarine sands of contouritic origin sealed by gas hydrates, and (iv) remobilized oozes above large evacuation craters and sealed by megaslides and glacial muds. The development of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet resulted in a rich variety of depositional environments with frequently changing types and patterns of glacial sedimentation. Extensive new 3D seismic data sets are crucial to correctly interpret glacial processes and to analyze the grain sizes of the related deposits. Furthermore, these data sets allow the identification of localized extensive fluid accumulations within the Quaternary succession and distinguish stratigraphic levels favorable for fluid accumulations from layers acting as fluid barriers.</p>


Geophysics ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 71 (6) ◽  
pp. V145-V152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ketil Hokstad ◽  
Roger Sollie

The basic theory of surface-related multiple elimination (SRME) can be formulated easily for 3D seismic data. However, because standard 3D seismic acquisition geometries violate the requirements of the method, the practical implementation for 3D seismic data is far from trivial. A major problem is to perform the crossline-summation step of 3D SRME, which becomes aliased because of the large separation between receiver cables and between source lines. A solution to this problem, based on hyperbolic sparse inversion, has been presented previously. This method is an alternative to extensive interpolation and extrapolation of data. The hyperbolic sparse inversion is formulated in the time domain and leads to few, but large, systems of equations. In this paper, we propose an alternative formulation using parabolic sparse inversion based on an efficient weighted minimum-norm solution that can be computed in the angular frequency domain. The main advantage of the new method is numerical efficiency because solving many small systems of equations often is faster than solving a few big ones. The method is demonstrated on 3D synthetic and real data with reflected and diffracted multiples. Numerical results show that the proposed method gives improved results compared to 2D SRME. For typical seismic acquisition geometries, the numerical cost running on 50 processors is [Formula: see text] per output trace. This makes production-scale processing of 3D seismic data feasible on current Linux clusters.


2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 380-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew W. Hill ◽  
Adeyemi Arogunmati ◽  
Gareth A. Wood ◽  
Duncan Attoe ◽  
Mike Fiske ◽  
...  

2008 ◽  
Vol 206 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 17-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bjarne Rafaelsen ◽  
Geir Elvebakk ◽  
Karin Andreassen ◽  
Lars Stemmerik ◽  
Arnout Colpaert ◽  
...  

2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 564
Author(s):  
Daniel Bishop ◽  
Megan Halbert ◽  
Katherine Welbourn ◽  
Ben Boterhoven ◽  
Stacey Mansfield ◽  
...  

Interpretation of regional scale merged 3D seismic data sets covering the North Carnarvon Basin has for the first time enabled a detailed description of Mesozoic stratigraphic and structural features on a basin scale. Isoproportional slicing of the data enables direct interpretation of Triassic depositional environments, including contrasting low-stand and high-stand fluvial channel complexes, marginal marine clastic systems and reef complexes. Channels vary dramatically between sinuous-straight single channels within low net:gross floodplain successions, to broad channel belts within relatively high net:gross fluvial successions. The latter can be traced from the inboard part of the basin to the outer areas of the Exmouth Plateau. 3D visualisation and interpretation has demonstrated the huge variety of structural styles that are present, including basement-involved extensional faults, detached listric fault complexes, polygonal faults, and regional scale vertical strike-slip faults with flower structures. Fault trends include north–south, north–northeast to south–southwest, and northeast–southwest, with deformation events occurring mainly between the Rhaetian and Valanginian. Extensional and compressional deformation has created multiple horsts, three-way fault closures, fold belts and associated four-way anticlinal traps. Wrench tectonics may also explain pock-mark trains with the interpreted transfer of over-pressure from Triassic to Early Cretaceous levels. The use of regional scale merged 3D seismic data sets is now shedding light on tectonostratigraphic features on a basin scale that were previously unrecognised or enigmatic on 2D seismic or local 3D seismic data sets.


Geophysics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 85 (6) ◽  
pp. V473-V479
Author(s):  
Rob Holt ◽  
Andy Lubrano

When present, surface-consistent (shot and/or receiver) phase instability will generate surface-consistent time shifts that are at least partially removed from seismic data when surface-consistent residual statics corrections are applied. The phase instability will not be fully corrected and lingers undetected in the data throughout the remainder of the processing workflow. After processing finishes, seismic interpreters often need to apply laterally varying phase rotations to tie their onshore 3D seismic data to synthetic seismograms, before starting detailed stratigraphic interpretation projects. We have developed and tested a new surface-consistent seismic processing workflow that can be applied to increase the phase stability of our seismic data. It is run after the final pass of conventional surface-consistent residual shot and receiver statics corrections have been applied to optimally align the seismic traces. The phase stability corrections are estimated from an additional pass of surface-consistent residual shot and receiver statics corrections that are calculated on the phase-independent seismic trace envelopes. We demonstrate the application of the workflow using synthetic and real seismic data. We gained confidence that the workflow was performing as expected after we intentionally phase rotated a small subset of the shots and receivers in our seismic test data sets and observed that the workflow corrected these intentionally phase-rotated traces with a high level of accuracy.


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