First Break - Volume 10, Issue 12, 1992

Faults are an important aspect of many reservoirs, particularly in the way that they control the flow of hydrocarbons during trap-filling or production. Any attempt at characterizing a faulted reservoir must address not only the properties of the reservoir rocks and of the fault surfaces but also the distribution of faults through the rock volume. Ideally, we should be able to characterize the fault population, i.e. how many faults are there of different sizes, what are their geometries, azimuths and locations, and what is their effect on the hydraulic properties of the reservoir?

The Porcupine Basin, a Mesozoic to Cenozoic ensialic N-S oriented basin, lies in deep North Atlantic waters (150 m in the north to over 1500 m in the south) on the continental shelf off the west coast of Ireland (Naylor and Shannon 1982). It is bounded to the north by the Slyne Ridge, to the west by the Porcupine Ridge, to the east by the Irish Mainland Shelf and it merges with the Goban Spur to the south (Fig. 1). The basin is divided by an E-W basement ridge into a small North Porcupine Basin and a large Main Porcupine Basin