GEO 2012

Developments in data processing technologies over the last few years represent a major step towards understanding and solving seismic challenges, these advanced technologies can help KOC achieving its objectives.

Urgonian platform carbonates are widespread in the Southeast of France. They were deposited along the northern Tethyan margin during the lower Cretaceous (Barremo-Aptian age) on the Vocontian basin border. They are mostly composed of rudist facies and bioclastic/ooid grainstones. The Urgonian formation of southeastern France can be considered as an analogue for Shu’aiba and Kharaib reservoirs of the Middle East to illustrate and understand the geometries and facies distributions of these reservoirs.

Qatar’s coasts are famous natural laboratories for carbonate research, especially for carbonate coastal spits. These thin, elongated bodies developed from the Holocene onwards along Qatar’s coast. One of these costal spits forms a superbly exposed cliff, the so-called Jabal Fuwairit, which is of Holocene age.

We propose the adaptive technique for hydrocarbon saturation determination. Its essence is to configure interpretative algorithms on characteristic values of reservoirs resistivity. Developed petrophysical reservoir model significantly improves accuracy and reliability of the quantitative inverse problem solution.

Seismic properties such as compressional and shear wave velocities, bulk density, impedance and Vp/Vs ratio are key elements in seismic reservoir characterization.

The lower to middle Jurassic Mafraq Formation is well exposed throughout the Oman Mountains. In the type section of Wadi Sahtan, the Mafraq Formation is 160 m thick and unconformably overlies the Triassic Jilh Formation. Detailed field logging, outcrop Gamma-ray spectroscopy as well as thinsection analyses were carried out, which is currently being followed by a regional study on the Mafraq of the entire Oman Mountains.

The Dammam Dome forms a significant topographic high on the east flank of the Arabian Peninsula, and consists of exposures of Tertiary sediments. This feature led to oil discovery in Saudi Arabia within the Upper Jurassic Arab Formation, and is attributed to episodic uplift by infra-Cambrian salt, comparable with the Awali Dome of Bahrain. While the Paleocene Umm Er Radhuma Formation is not exposed, the overlying succession is well exposed commencing with the Lower Eocene Rus Formation followed by the Middle Eocene Dammam Formation and then by the Middle Miocene Dam Formation. Despite representing a much thinner succession than is present off-structure, new measured sections reveal additional aspects of depositional cyclicity that, with biofacies, add new insights to the sedimentological and palaeoenvironmental history of the region.

We present a case study for advanced pre-stack depth imaging over the Dhok Sultan block, utilizing anisotropic Reverse Time Migration (TTI RTM) to produce a more reliable structural interpretation compared to legacy processing.

While, historically, the number of seismic recording channels increases by orders of magnitude every 10 years, current 3D Wide Azimuth field acquisition geometries usually have poor spatial sampling in at least one dimension. Most of the demultiple and imaging algorithms, such as reverse time migration, wave equation imaging algorithms and 3D SRME, assume regularly and densely sampled data.

We present a case study for pre-stack depth imaging over the Greater Burgan oilfield, with an emphasis on the use of geological constraints to provide more accurate and reliable velocity models and seismic images.