High Resolution Reservoir Characterization in the Arno-Bauer Field

An innovative workflow comprising iterative seismic petrophysics and rock physics modeling, seismic conditioning cum joint facies and elastic properties geostatistical inversion was implemented to the Arno and Bauer Birkhead oil fields located in the Cooper-Eromanga Basin in South Australia following successful proof of concept study over the nearby Growler field ( A. Mannini et al., 2022 ). The biggest and commonly encountered challenge in this study area which is the discrimination of different reservoir facies from elastic properties derived from deterministic inversion due to their substantial overlap was addressed in the POC. The workflow has in addition discriminated carbonaceous shale in the region that gave rise to false AVO anomaly posing significant risk in using AVO based technologies. Compare with the Growler field which contains thicker stacked sands, the Arno and Bauer fields have encountered additional challenges such as, much thinner sands and lower signal-to-noise seismic data. This paper shows the successful application of previously built rock physics model from the Growler field to the Arno and Bauer fields that has improved well data consistency, interpretability, and usability, as well as the geostatistical inversion results demonstrating discrimination of the thin-bed reservoir facies that can be used to aid in future well planning.