oa Regional Characterization of Middle Triassic-Middle Jurassic Tight Reservoirs in Abu Dhabi, UAE

With an increasing demand of hydrocarbon resource from tight reservoirs, some of the exploration studies have been re-focused on the previously under-explored tight formations in Abu Dhabi.

The Middle Triassic to the Middle Jurassic formations, mainly Gulailah, Minjur, Marrat, Hamlah and Izhara from deeper to shallower, are the play fairways of tight hydrocarbon resource in Abu Dhabi. However, due to lack of systematic data integration, these tight formations were poorly mapped without a clear definition of their tight reservoirs. This paper is focused on re-mapping these tight formations on a regional scale and characterizing the tight reservoirs in the updated geological framework. The reservoirs were characterized in terms of geometry, quality and its controlling factors of deposition, diagenesis and hydrocarbon migration. This characterization was based on the unification of regional well correlation, reflection pattern interpretation of re-processed 3D PSTM seismic data and geochemical measurement results of cutting samples and fluid inclusions. As a result, a layer-cake to jigsaw-puzzle reservoir model is associated to the Middle Triassic to Middle Jurassic tight reservoirs.