scholarly journals Geophysical imaging of porosity variations in the Danish North Sea chalk

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 17-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanni Abramovitz

More than 80% of the present-day oil and gas production in the Danish part of the North Sea is extracted from fields with chalk reservoirs of late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) and early Paleocene (Danian) ages (Fig. 1). Seismic reflection and in- version data play a fundamental role in mapping and characterisation of intra-chalk structures and reservoir properties of the Chalk Group in the North Sea. The aim of seismic inversion is to transform seismic reflection data into quantitative rock properties such as acoustic impedance (AI) that provides information on reservoir properties enabling identification of porosity anomalies that may constitute potential reservoir compartments. Petrophysical analyses of well log data have shown a relationship between AI and porosity. Hence, AI variations can be transformed into porosity variations and used to support detailed interpretations of porous chalk units of possible reservoir quality. This paper presents an example of how the chalk team at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) integrates geological, geophysical and petrophysical information, such as core data, well log data, seismic 3-D reflection and AI data, when assessing the hydrocarbon prospectivity of chalk fields.

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. T477-T485 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ângela Pereira ◽  
Rúben Nunes ◽  
Leonardo Azevedo ◽  
Luís Guerreiro ◽  
Amílcar Soares

Numerical 3D high-resolution models of subsurface petroelastic properties are key tools for exploration and production stages. Stochastic seismic inversion techniques are often used to infer the spatial distribution of the properties of interest by integrating simultaneously seismic reflection and well-log data also allowing accessing the spatial uncertainty of the retrieved models. In frontier exploration areas, the available data set is often composed exclusively of seismic reflection data due to the lack of drilled wells and are therefore of high uncertainty. In these cases, subsurface models are usually retrieved by deterministic seismic inversion methodologies based exclusively on the existing seismic reflection data and an a priori elastic model. The resulting models are smooth representations of the real complex geology and do not allow assessing the uncertainty. To overcome these limitations, we have developed a geostatistical framework that allows inverting seismic reflection data without the need of experimental data (i.e., well-log data) within the inversion area. This iterative geostatistical seismic inversion methodology simultaneously integrates the available seismic reflection data and information from geologic analogs (nearby wells and/or analog fields) allowing retrieving acoustic impedance models. The model parameter space is perturbed by a stochastic sequential simulation methodology that handles the nonstationary probability distribution function. Convergence from iteration to iteration is ensured by a genetic algorithm driven by the trace-by-trace mismatch between real and synthetic seismic reflection data. The method was successfully applied to a frontier basin offshore southwest Europe, where no well has been drilled yet. Geologic information about the expected impedance distribution was retrieved from nearby wells and integrated within the inversion procedure. The resulting acoustic impedance models are geologically consistent with the available information and data, and the match between the inverted and the real seismic data ranges from 85% to 90% in some regions.


Geophysics ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 75 (6) ◽  
pp. O57-O67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daria Tetyukhina ◽  
Lucas J. van Vliet ◽  
Stefan M. Luthi ◽  
Kees Wapenaar

Fluvio-deltaic sedimentary systems are of great interest for explorationists because they can form prolific hydrocarbon plays. However, they are also among the most complex and heterogeneous ones encountered in the subsurface, and potential reservoir units are often close to or below seismic resolution. For seismic inversion, it is therefore important to integrate the seismic data with higher resolution constraints obtained from well logs, whereby not only the acoustic properties are used but also the detailed layering characteristics. We have applied two inversion approaches for poststack, time-migrated seismic data to a clinoform sequence in the North Sea. Both methods are recursive trace-based techniques that use well data as a priori constraints but differ in the way they incorporate structural information. One method uses a discrete layer model from the well that is propagated laterally along the clinoform layers, which are modeled as sigmoids. The second method uses a constant sampling rate from the well data and uses horizontal and vertical regularization parameters for lateral propagation. The first method has a low level of parameterization embedded in a geologic framework and is computationally fast. The second method has a much higher degree of parameterization but is flexible enough to detect deviations in the geologic settings of the reservoir; however, there is no explicit geologic significance and the method is computationally much less efficient. Forward seismic modeling of the two inversion results indicates a good match of both methods with the actual seismic data.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 445-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silje S. Skarpeid ◽  
James M. Churchill ◽  
Jamie P. J. Hilton ◽  
Chris N. Izatt ◽  
Matthew T. Poole

AbstractThe Knarr Field is located in the northern Norwegian North Sea, beyond the Brent Group delta fairway. Knarr was discovered in 2008 with the Jordbær well, additional resources were added to the field in 2011 with the successful Jordbær Vest well. The field extends over an area of approximately 20 km2. The original oil in place is estimated to be 26 MSm3 (163 MBBL). The reservoir is the Late Pliensbachian Cook Formation and its current burial depth is approximately −3700 m true vertical depth subsea (TVDSS). In Knarr, the Cook Formation is split into five sandstones that are separated by four shale intervals which can be correlated across the field. The three lower sands (Lower Cook) are interpreted to have been deposited in a tidally-dominated environment, while the upper two sandstones (Upper Cook) were deposited in a wave-dominated shallow-marine setting. The reservoir properties of the Cook Formation in the Knarr area are remarkably good for a reservoir at this depth, with porosities up to 28% and permeabilities in excess of 1 D. The good reservoir properties are the result of grain-coating chlorite, which has inhibited diagenetic quartz development. The field is developed with three oil producers and three water injectors produced via a floating production storage and offloading vessel (FPSO). First oil was achieved in March 2015.


1999 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 99-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Abramovitz ◽  
H. Thybo

Seismic reflection data from the Horn Graben area in the southeastern part of the North Sea, off-shore Denmark, have been interpreted to illustrate the upper crustal structures around the MONA LISA deep seismic lines. The study area comprises the southern Horn Graben area and the eastern part of East North Sea High, where the Caledonian collision suture between Baltica and Eastern Avalonia bends such that the strike direction changes from ESE in the south to NNW in the north. Integrated interpretation of normal-incidence reflection data and wide-angle refraction data reveals substantial occurrences of lower and upper Palaeozoic strata in the area, thickest below the Horn Graben. This may indicate that Horn Graben developed as a graben structure during late Palaeozoic in the former Caledonian foredeep. On the northern and eastern parts of the MONA LISA deep seismic reflection lines 1 and 3, the main E- dipping boundary fault of the southern Horn Graben segment appears to be listric at depth with a sub-horizon-tal detachment at the top of the reflective lower crust. We have mapped the lateral extent of the lower Permian, volcanic Rotliegend reflector in the study area on the basis of seismic lines from the RTD-81 survey. Dipping reflections observed in the sedimentary strata below the Rotliegend reflector are interpreted as Cal-edonian structures generated by folding and deformation in Lower Palaeozoic Baltica shelf sediments in the Caledonian foreland basin. A sequence of S- and W-dipping reflections above 4 s twt are interpreted as preserved Caledonian thrusts in the upper crustal frontal part of the SW-dipping Caledonian Deformation Front.


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