A QUALITATIVE APPROACH FOR THIN BED RESERVOIR INTERPRETATION, A CASE
STUDY IN AN ULTRA DEEPWATER FIELD, SABAH
Muhammad Ferdaos Bin Mostapa1, Hairul Hafez Abu Bakar1, Nuril Anwar Ahba A Hamid1, M
Iqbal Supardy1, Lee Kien Kok1
1
PETRONAS
Introduction
The ultra-deep water J field is situated in the southern corner of Block K, approximately 150 km
Northwest of Labuan and in water depth of 1662m. Based on exploration and appraisal drilling, the field
is observed to be highly compartmentalized with reservoirs being thin. In this ultra deep water setting,
there is a heavy reliance on seismic data to help delineate the reservoir. The field Seismic data however
has limitations where due to its low signal to noise ratio and the vertical resolution is deemed to be poor.
As such, the thin beds prominent in Jewel field may not be fully resolved causing the thin hydrocarbon
bearing reservoirs to go undetected. The presence of shallow gas accumulation can be a good indicator of
a working petroleum system but these shallow gas in Jewel field masks the underlying seismic reservoir
response as well as push down events causing time delay of the field structure. To address these
limitations, this paper describe a qualitative approach of advance seismic attribute which better resolved
the thin bed seismic response and enhanced the seismic amplitude affected by the shallow gas observed in
Jewel field .
Figure 1: The resolution of PSDM 2017 is 22m. The thickest sand is 10 meters which away below the
tuning thickness. In addition the seismic data is severely suffers with shallow gas.
Internal
A Qualitative Approached of Advance Seismic Attributes for Ultra Deep Water
Normal conventional seismic is not sufficient to be used to characterized thin bed reservoir. In additional,
poor quality seismic data due to shallow gas further aggravates the problem and make it difficult to
delineate these reservoirs using conventional seismic attributes. To address this shortcoming, spectral
broadening algorithm could help improve the vertical resolution. This method is also simple and fast to
apply. First, qualitative attribute weighted noise cancellation and amplitude normalization were applied.
The technique could recover the amplitudes attenuated in the shadow zones as a result of overlying gas
clouds and processing related issues. Next, the differentiations were applied to enhanced noise
cancellation volume. This method can aid in revealing potential thin beds by resolving doublets in the
seismic data.
Figure 2: General workflow for qualitative approached of advance seismic attributes.
Result
The seismic resolution has potentially improved by applying the qualitative integrated approach.
Furthermore, there is a degree of confidence that there is no over-boosting taking place because only the
first two derivatives are used in the algorithm. The result is aligned with the hard data, where synthetic
seismogram give high correlation between the new enhanced seismic and elastic properties of well logs.
Internal
Figure 3: The original data (left) and result of weighted attributes noise cancellation (right).
Future Application for Reservoir Characterization
The limited resolution of conventional seismic and gas cloud effects are extremely challenging for thin
bed interpretation. Thus, the implementation of qualitative attributes technique has potentially aid the
detection of thin bed reservoir and improved the seismic quality. However, heavy reliance on the spectral
broadening algorithm will only solve one part of the problem which is vertical resolution, but not the
reservoir properties. Hence, in the future development plan, the Geostatistical inversion potentially can be
the success factor to reflect the heterogeneity of the reservoir. The combination of enhanced seismic data
and Geostatistical inversion techniques can help to improve the signal to noise ratio and solve the thin bed
reservoir characterization interpretation. A new bandwidth extension method developed which will
broaden the bandwidth with minimal noise boosting. This method is called Signal Recognition Bandwidth
Extension (SBEX), this method is able to enhance the energy of coherent events while suppress the
incoherent noises in different frequency from different frequency band. Compare to conventional
bandwidth extension, it is more stable with limited noise boosting. Figure 4 are displaying the comparison
between conventional bandwith extension and SBEX.
Figure 4: Left: Input; Middle: Result after conventional bandwidth extension; Right: Result after SBEX.
Internal
Figure 5: Spectra of Input, Conventional Bandwidth Extension and SBEX. (RED Line: Input; GREEN Line:
conventional bandwidth extension; Blue Line: SBEX)
Conclusions
In summary, the advance qualitative seismic technique successfully improve the seismic vertical
resolution and enhance the seismic quality, where severely affected by gas cloud. In addition, the
improved seismic dataset plays an important role in providing high-graded structural interpretation of J
field, providing higher confidence to the Asset Team in terms of hydrocarbon resource assessment and
well placement of J appraisal campaign.
References
Sajid and Ghazali (2018). Nonstationary differential resolution: An algorithm to improve seismic
Resolution. Geophysics, Vol. 83, No. 3 (May-June 2018); P. V149–V156, 11 FIGS.
Binti Ismail, H., Khalil, A, 2013. Push down correction with and without OBC: A case study in a
Greenfield, AAPG Geoscience Technology Workshop, Kuala Lumpur Jun 4-5 2013.
Sheriff, R. E. Vertical and Lateral Seismic Resolution and Attenuation. Development Geology Reference
Manual. AAPG Wiki.
Schlumberger. (2012).Interpreter’s Guide to Seismic Attributes.
Luiz Gomez. (2015) GeoTeric Amplitude Normalization. Unpublished Report.
Internal
