SHALLOW HAZARD ASSESSMENT USING SEISMIC DATA – A SUCCESS CASE FOR SAFE DRILLING IN CENTRAL LUCONIA

Offshore drilling operation in the oil and gas industry is complicated and exhibits different types of technical challenges as the mysteries of the water bottom conditions and the environments that occur at different depths. The recent drilling operations continue to encounter shallow geological hazards (geohazards) with different intensity. Many operating companies in the industry are running geohazard assessment surveys early on in the project to measure the degree of geological complexity and level of hazards associated with the drilling operation in the site. This paper is part of a geohazards study for an exploration well in the South China Sea offshore Sarawak, Malaysia. The assessment is based on integrating the interpretation of a high-resolution two-dimensional seismic data (2D) with the normal three-dimensional seismic data (3-D) to evaluate the near subsurface geology and identify the hazardous locations prior to the drilling campaign. Different seismic attributes maps such as Root Mean Square (RMS) and Variance generated to highlight features of interest and identify the hazardous areas. The results of the shallow hazard assessment were identifications of shallow gas accumulations at different levels, faults and channels in the area of interest