Innovative Method for Exploring Potential Reservoirs in Areas of Limited Data - A case study from Deep Water South China Sea

The study area is in deep water offshore South China. Only one well has been drilled so far. There are 2 target intervals. The shallow interval encountered gas bearing sands with low porosity (average 5%) and high volume of clay (average 55%) and the deep interval carbonates and volcanics with no sand. Gas found in shallow interval was not of commercial saturation. Two key issues needed to be resolved from this study: a) Are there better quality sands away from the drilled well within the seismic block in the shallow interval? b) Are there sands in the deeper target interval? If so how are the qualities of the sands? The study looked at ways of using recent advances in seismic inversion and rock physics unravel most information from seismic in absence of sufficient hard data.