Integrated Geological and Geophysical Studies to Reduce Exploration Risk in Heterogeneous Sandstone Reservoir

Hafiz J. Alshammery, Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia Abstract

The upper Unayzah sands constitute a gas reservoir in the south Haradh region of the giant Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia. This part of the Unayzah reservoir was deposited as incised channel-fill clastics and associated lowstand delta deposits in a shallow to marginal marine environment with facies varying from siltstone to reservoir quality sandstones. Mapping the reservoir sands posed an exploration/delineation challenge. We investigated the applicability of various seismic attributes in mapping the upper Unayzah reservoir in this region. The existing well control indicates that acoustic impedance is a discriminating attribute between reservoir and non-reservoir facies. Inverting high quality 3D seismic data to acoustic impedance is the initial basis on which the reservoir is mapped. 1D modeling is used to study the effect of reservoir presence on the surface seismic signature. It was discovered that reservoir development causes detectable stretching in the seismic reflections. These features are displayed areally to identify good reservoir development utilizing neural networks and second norm similarity attributes. Both methods show similar reservoir distribution to that mapped by acoustic impedance. Increasing the bandwidth during processing transforms the stretched wavelet to a doublet, which is mapped by attributes as elementary as the mean amplitude of the seismic data. Modeling also shows that the reservoir presence and the subsequent waveform change causes reduction in the frequency content which is displayed using frequency attributes such as the centroid frequency. The different attributes converge, when viewed on a common reservoir distribution map, verifying the presence of high fidelity seismic data and increasing the confidence in identifying the Unayzah reservoir distribution.

Introduction
The Unayzah reservoir is one of the major Paleozoic reservoirs in Saudi Arabia. Significant gas accumulations have been discovered in this reservoir in the Haradh region of the Ghawar field in eastern Arabia. The reservoir shows strong stratigraphic and sedimentologic heterogeneity which rendered 2D seismic data useless for purposes other than mapping the reservoir structure. A 3D seismic survey is acquired to try to help characterize the heterogeneity of Figure 1 - Location map of the Haradh region. The black the Unayzah reservoir. The rectangle represents the 3D seismic survey area. objective of this paper is to investigate the applicability of 3D seismic attributes to map high porosity trends in the Unayzah reservoir in survey area.
Hawiyah Haradh Well-L Harmaliyah Minjurah Well-K Well-C Well-B Well-A Sahba Well-D Well-E Well-F Well-H Well-G Well-I Well-J Tinat 20 Km

The Haradh region and the location of the 3D survey area are shown in figure (1). The seismic survey covers an area of about 600 km2 and encompasses four wells that penetrate the reservoir. The synthetic seismograms from these wells are tied to the 3D surface seismic data and are also utilized in computing some of the reservoir indicators. Unlike Well A, which flowed major amounts of gas, well B encountered a silty and tight facies of the reservoir and did not flow during well testing. The seismic response at the two well locations provides the basis for computing the seismic attributes used to map the optimal reservoir facies. These four wells and the rest of the wells shown in figure (1) are used to

study the different reservoir facies and find more seismic attributes to compute from the seismic data. We start with presenting a geological framework of the Unayzah reservoir regionally and in the study area. The paper describes the acquisition effort and the processing parameters applied to the data. The study then discusses the different seismic attributes used to map the high porosity trends in the reservoir and the methodology adopted in deriving these reservoir indicators.

Geologic Overview
The Permian-Carboniferous Unayzah reservoir is stratigraphically and sedimentologically heterogeneous. The regional mapping and facies distribution of the Unayzah reservoir is an active research area in Saudi Aramco and multiple models are proposed to map and predict the areal distribution of this reservoir. Senalp and Al-Duaiji (2001)1 provide a regional framework of the Unayzah reservoir from the outcrop through the central Arabian Unayzah oil fields and ends in the study area in the south Ghawar region. According to this geological model, the Unayzah reservoir extends between the Pre-Haradh (Hercynian) unconformity (PHU) and the base of the Khuff D carbonate (BKDC). Moreover, the reservoir is divided into three formations with the Haradh formation at the bottom of the sequence. This formation extends between the PHU and the Pre-Unayzah unconformity (PUU) and is comprised mainly of fine to coarse grained, well-sorted and very well cemented sandstones. It was deposited during the Permo-Carboniferous glaciation and periglaciation as braided stream, eolian sand and glaciolake facies. The Haradh formation is generally considered to be a poor reservoir but occasionally flows gas in areas where it is fractured. The second formation up the sequence is the typical red bed Unayzah formation. This formation is deposited in arid to semiarid continental conditions in alluvial fan, sand dune and playa environments during the early late Permian. This formation can form excellent reservoirs; however, it is believed not to be present in the area of interest. The uppermost formation in the Unayzah reservoir is the Ash-Shiqqah formation, which spans the interval between the Pre-Ash-Shiqqah unconformity (PAU), or the top of the Unayzah formation, and the base Khuff D carbonate. The Ash-Shiqqah formation is subdivided to upper and lower members. The lower member is deposited as a results of marine transgression on top of the PAU and is comprised mainly of shales and siltstones deposited in interdistributary bays and swamp areas of a costal plain. Some sandstones were deposited by fluvial delta distributary channels. Substantial sea level drop followed the deposition of the lower member which led to valley incisions into the underlying units. The upper member of the Ash-Shiqqah formation was deposited in these incised valleys as braided channel valley fills and associated lowstand deltaic sequences. The deltaic deposits are typically composed of a single coarsening upward sequence with pro-delta shales at the bottom and delta distributary mouth bar sandstones at the top of the sequence.
Well-B Well-A The reservoir in the area of interest is interpreted as the upper member of the AshKhuff Carbonates BKDC Shiqqah formation, which is deposited in the Marine Shale lowstand delta associated with incised Delta Distributary Channel Sandstone valleys, and is generically referred to as the Delta Distributary Unayzah reservoir in this paper. The Mouth Bar Sandstone reservoir is encountered at depths ranging from 3,500 m on top of the Haradh structure Prodelta Siltstone to 4,400 m in the flanks of the field. Figure (2) shows log composites and basic PAU/PHU Prodelta Shale lithofacies correlation for wells A and B, PAU which are inside the 3D survey area under Haradh Formation PHU study. Well A shows the typical deltaic deposits of the reservoir with prodelta shales and siltstones at the bottom of the sequence and distributary mouth bar and channel 0 200 140 40 0 200 140 40 sandstones at the top of the sequence. The reservoir in well A is one of the best Figure 2 - Well log composites and lithofacies encountered in Haradh, flowing large correlation for the two key wells in the survey quantities of gas during well testing. Well B area. Tick marks in the depth scale are 15.24 m encountered a proximal section relative to (50 ft) apart. that penetrated in well A and the excellent reservoir in well A is replaced by tight and silty sandstones that did not flow any formation fluids when tested. These two wells will be used extensively to compute seismic attributes that serve as reservoir
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quality indicators. The sands in the two wells, as well as all the other wells used in this study, are capped with a 13 m to 23 m thick layer of dark marine shale which is overlain by the Khuff carbonates providing the top seal for the reservoir in the Haradh area.

Seismic Coverage
The Haradh field was initially mapped using 2-D seismic data and all the wells in the study location shown in figure (1) were proposed and drilled based primarily on structural considerations. Although 2-D seismic data interpretation led to accurate structural mapping in Haradh, it failed to provide seismic attributes to be used for reservoir quality assessment. A new 3D seismic survey was acquired during the first half of 1998 to meet the objective of mapping the porous trends in the Unayzah reservoir. The 3D survey utilized 1440 channels in 10 receiver lines. The source and receiver group interval was 50 m and the maximum nominal fold was 360. Asymmetric split straddle acquisition geometry was adapted to achieve a maximum offset of 4874 m. The data was acquired using vibroseis with a source density of 400 shot points per squared kilometer and with 8-80 Hz sweep. The data was processed to preserve relative amplitude variations. In addition to the standard velocity Well-B Well-A analysis and residual static passes, the processing flow included surface consistent gain and deconvolution and signal enhancement procedures. Following DMO velocity analysis and stacking, the data were migrated. Vibroseis deconvolution was applied to the migrated stack to convert the data to zero phase. The heavy acquisition parameters and the processing flow described above made the 3D data much superior in quality to the existing 2-D seismic data. The 3D acquisition resolved many of the static problems the 2-D data suffered greatly from, which improved data Figure 3 - The seismic response at the locations of the continuity. Figure (3) shows the seismic two key wells. The synthetic trace (red curve) data quality around the two key wells A character tie is good for both wells. Light green and B along with their respective arrows show possible multiple contamination below synthetics. The reservoir, on average, the reservoir interval. spans the interval from 10 to 25 ms below the BKDC event and the data shows that there is no consistent reflection from the base of the reservoir. The degraded seismic to synthetic tie around 40 ms bellows the BKDC reflection, seen in figure (3), indicates possible multiple contamination below the reservoir interval. Except for a few areas southwest of well B and in the northern areas of the 3D survey, the reservoir interval shows minimal multiple interference. The data at the well location show the prominent BKDC reflection which is the regional marker used to map the top of the Unayzah in the south Ghawar region. Due to the coarsening upward nature of the reservoir in the area of interest, changes in the Unayzah reservoir quality introduce variations in the character of the BKDC reflection, which in turn can be used to compute Unayzah reservoir quality indicators.
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Reservoir Quality Indicator Attributes Acoustic Impedance

The inverted acoustic impedance can be a good seismic attribute to detect certain geologic units in the seismic data. The first step required for successful usage of this tool is to confirm

Figure 4 - The upper panel shows the different acoustic impedance classes of the Unayzah reservoir in the study area. The lower panel shows that low acoustic impedance values correlate with high porosity reservoir.

that the target unit has distinctive acoustic impedance values relative to the surrounding strata. In this section, log impedance values from the wells shown in figure (1) are used to study the variation in the acoustic impedance of the different units in the Unayzah reservoir section in the area of interest. The units investigated are the Haradh formation and the Ash-Shiqqah formation, including the reservoir facies and the prodelta shale and siltstone unit below the reservoir and above the PAU. Figure (4a) shows that the geologic section encountered in the wells is divided into five units in the acoustic impedance domain. The Haradh formation has the highest impedance values among the five units. The lowest end of the impedance spectrum represents the reservoir facies characterized by large porosity and permeability values which give rise to high formation fluid flow rates in some wells such as well A. The other three units that represent the deltaic siltstones, the silty Well-C reservoir and the tight Ash-Shiqqah sandstones have intermediate acoustic Well-B impedance values and their ranges show strong overlap. Although the Well-A distribution of the porous reservoir facies has a large variance, it shows minimal overlap with the other facies in the Unayzah reservoir. This fact is the bases of interpreting low inverted Well-D acoustic impedance values as the reservoir unit favorable for exploration drilling. Figure (4b) shows that core porosities in the Ash-Shiqqah High Low Acoustic Impedance sandstones correlate with low well log derived acoustic impedance values. Figure 5 - Mean inverted acoustic impedance in the This relation further supports reservoir time interval. interpreting minimum impedance values as a favorable reservoir indicator. The 3D seismic data is inverted to acoustic impedance utilizing a model-based algorithm using wells WellA, Original WellA, Porosity Substituted Synthetic A, B, C and D to construct the initial model. Figure (5) shows Synthetic mean inverted acoustic impedance the for the reservoir time interval extending from 10 ms to 25 ms below the BKDC reflection. The impedance values in this map do not show the same distribution observed in well log derived values, most likely, due to the thin nature of the reservoir. The reservoir is generally 0.25 to 0.45 of the dominant wavelength in the Ash-Shiqqah clastics. BKDC However, the strong separation between the BKDC reservoir and non-reservoir facies of the target unit in the acoustic impedance domain, as shown in figure (4a), facilitates interpreting shifts toward low impedance values as possible favorable reservoir indicators. This method maps two porosity trends in the area with one extending from well D toward the northeast passing east of well A. The other trend also extends in the same general direction and passes through well A. There is also a minor northeast-southwest trend midway between wells A and B. The acoustic impedance map also delineates an area around well B that is 0 100 200 100 80 60 40 0 100 200 100 80 60 40 GR Dt (us/ft) GR Dt (us/ft) characterized by high acoustic impedance values and is interpreted as silty or tight reservoir sands not recommended for drilling. In the next sections, other reservoir indicators will be considered to help validate and augment the reservoir map obtained through inverting the 3D seismic data to acoustic impedance.

BKDC Waveform Shape Based Attributes

Figure 6 - The left three panels show the original The top of the reservoir is separated from the synthetic along with the gamma ray and sonic BKDC marker by a 13 m to 23 m thick marine logs for well A. The porosity-substituted shale layer in the south Haradh region. The synthetic is shown in the next three panels. Base of the Khuff carbonate gives rise to a strong and regionally mapable seismic reflection in the

Time

south Ghawar region. The close proximity of the coarsening upward Ash-Shiqqah formation and the BKDC reflection causes variations in the seismic event character as a function of reservoir presence in the clastic section below. Figure (3) shows that BKDC the character of the BKDC reflection at well A, where the porous reservoir is penetrated, is Before stretched appearing almost like a doublet unlike BKDC the case in well B which encountered a tight and silty section. The synthetic seismograms at the After two well locations, depicted as red traces in figure (3), show the same waveform character change as observed in the real seismic data. This match Figure 7 - The effect of post-stack spectral between the synthetic and real data hints to a whitening on the BKDC reflection character relation between the shape of the BKDC seismic in areas with good Unayzah reservoir. The event and the development of porous reservoir in BKDC reflection inside the red ellipse is the Ash-Shiqqah formation. To confirm such a associated with the red balanced amplitude relation, the reflection character at well A is spectrum. compared to that observed in well B after removing the porous reservoir from well A through porosity substitution. The procedure followed to perform porosity substitution is to cross-plot core-derived porosities from cored intervals in the Ash-Shiqqah formation and the corresponding sonic transit times and log densities. Cross-plotting these reservoir parameters is used to empirically define relations between reservoir sonic and density values and the porosity of the reservoir. The porosity-substituted acoustic impedance log for the new reservoir with hypothetical porosity values is derived using these established relations. The mean porosity of the reservoir encountered in well A is reduced by 50% and the new sonic and density logs are calculated using the method described above to create synthetic seismograms for the new degraded reservoir. Figure (6) shows the new and the original synthetics at well A. Reducing the mean reservoir porosity from 15% to 7% removed the extra leg the BKDC reflection originally had and the overall reflector character is similar to that observed in well B. This experiment shows that the starching in the BKDC reflection is a diagnostic indicator of porous reservoir development in the Ash-Shiqqah formation. The detectability of the stretching in the BKDC reflection can be enhanced by further data processing. In the presence of high S/N data, post-stack spectral whitening can make variations in the character of Well-C A B the seismic marker more pronounced. Figure (7) shows the BKDC event around an area where excellent reservoir is penetrated before and after spectral whitening. The starched waveform is Well-B transformed to a doublet, which is a more detectable waveform. It should be noted that in areas with
L2 Norm 0.5 WellC WellB WellA

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Figure 8 - Panel A shows the mean amplitude in the Unayzah reservoir time interval. Positive values indicate potential favorable reservoir. Panel B depicts the second norm attribute when well A is used as a reference. Both maps show similar reservoir trends. low S/N, spectral broadening introduces high frequency noise in the data, which degrades the reservoir detectability from the BKDC event waveform character. Thus seems that reservoir development in the clastics below the Khuff formation leads to subsequent waveform variations in the character of the BKDC reflection. These variations take the form of stretching of the seismic event or the formation of a secondary peak below the BKDC seismic event depending on the porosity of the reservoir and the frequency content of the data. This section

investigates the different methods that can be used to detect these waveform changes to define areas of optimal reservoir. The mean amplitude in the window extending to 10 ms to 20 ms below BKDC seismic event is used to study the reservoir presence in the Ash-Shiqqah formation. Figure (6) shows that when the reservoir is present this time window is filled primarily with positive amplitudes whereas the same interval spans negative data values where the reservoir is absent; therefore, the mean amplitude over this time interval is positive where the BKDC reflector is stretched, indicating optimal reservoir, and negative where the waveform is not stretched. Positive mean amplitude serves as a flag indicating areas where porous reservoir is expected. A second method to map areas in which the BKDC reflection is elongated is by using similarity attributes. In this case a data window extending from 10 ms above the BKDC reflection to 30 ms below it is used to compute the second norm between the seismic data recorded at well A and the rest of the data. Large resulting second norm values are interpreted as favorable areas for good reservoir development. Figure (8) shows the mean amplitude and second norm attribute maps in the reservoir flagging areas of possible optimal reservoir. The reservoir distribution pattern these attributes produce shows the same main trends delineated by the inverted acoustic impedance map. The northeastsouthwest trend between wells A and B is Neural Network Trace Classification more pronounced than in the previous attribute map. Moreover, the reservoir shows WellC strong compartmentalization, which is not obvious from the reservoir impedance map.
WellB WellA

Varying reflection character can be identified using neural network classification algorithms. In this study, this method is used to verify that the elongated BKDC reflection, WellD indicating favorable reservoir, is reliable for Class 1 Class 2 Class 3 Class 4 areal mapping. Unsupervised competitive neural networks are used to classify the window starting 10 ms above the BKDC event to 30 ms below it into four class traces. Figure 9 - The map above shows the spatial The output of this procedure is shown if distribution of the class traces resulting from figure (9). The typical stretched BKDC event neural network trace classification. is captured by the algorithm and is displayed as the third class. The areal distribution of this reservoir class is very similar to that obtained by the other attribute maps. The map shows the main northeast-southwest trends and the probable degraded reservoir around well B. The neural network reservoir mapping shows strong compartmentalization similar to that observed in the mean amplitude and second norm attribute maps.
WellA, Synthetic Seismic WellA, Amplitude Spectrum 0 1 Center Freq = 29 Hz
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Frequency Domain Attributes

In addition to the previous time domain attributes, frequency domain based reservoir indicators can be used to delineate the reservoir in the area of interest. It has been shown that reservoir development in the clastics below the Khuff formation leads to stretching the BKDC reflection, which implies reduction in the apparent high frequency Figure 10 - The synthetic seismograms at wells content of this seismic event. The synthetic A and B and their corresponding amplitude seismograms in wells A and B around the spectra. Reservoir development in the reservoir level are used to investigate the Unayzah leads to reduction in apparent frequency domain behavior of the BKDC frequency content of the BKDC reflection. reflection as a function Unayzah reservoir presence. The real data were not used for that purpose due to the excellent character match between the synthetic and real data and to eliminate any seismic source or overburden effects on the BKDC reflection frequency content. Figure (10) shows the synthetic data obtained using a 35 Hz Ricker wavelet for wells A and B and their respective amplitude

spectra. The traces in this figure show the BKDC Well-C reflection missing the extra leg in well B where the Well-B reservoir is tight. The amplitude spectra, computed Well-A from a 60 ms window centered on the BKDC reflection, show drastic reduction in the high frequency content in well A relative to that observed in well B where the reservoir is Well-D degraded. The amplitude spectra in the reservoir interval in the two key wells show that the centroid 35 25 frequency drops from 39 Hz Hz to 29 Hz when the reservoir Figure 11- Center frequency map of the BKDC reflection develops in the Ash-Shiqqah formation. It can be concluded from this experiment that reservoir porosity development leads to strong reduction in the apparent frequency of the overlaying BKDC seismic reflection. The real seismic data are used to compute the centroid frequency from the BKDC reflection and the output is mapped in figure (11). Low center frequency values delineate similar trends observed in the other attribute maps. The area around well B stands out with high frequency values indicating probable tight reservoir. The frequency map shows possible discontinuity in the reservoir trends similar to that observed in time domain attributes.

Conclusion
The Unayzah reservoir is the major Paleozoic reservoir in the Haradh region of the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia. In this study, we investigate the applicability of 3D seismic attributes to map high porosity trends in this reservoir for exploration/delineation purposes. On regional scale, the Unayzah reservoir is composed of three formations: the Haradh formation, the Unayzah formation and the AshShiqqah formation. The Ash-Shiqqah formation is the topmost member of the Unayzah reservoir and constitutes the reservoir in the 3D survey area under study. It is composed of a single coarsening upward deltaic sequence which is capped by the massive Permian Khuff carbonates. The delta mouth bar and channel sandstones on top of deltaic sequence form the reservoir in south Haradh. The base of the Khuff carbonate gives rise to a strong and areally mapable seismic event the character of which reflects variation is the clastic reservoir below. A variety of seismic attributes are used to study the variations in the Unayzah reservoir in the area of interest. The Unayzah reservoir sections penetrated in the wells inside and outside the survey show that the reservoir and non-reservoir facies do not overlap in the acoustic impedance domain with low impedance values correlating with large reservoir porosity values. This trend facilitated interpreting inverted acoustic impedance data in the reservoir interval as favorable reservoir indicator. The close proximity of the BKDC reflection and the top of the reservoir leads to variations in the character of this seismic event as a function of reservoir development in the Unayzah. The seismic and synthetic traces around well A, which penetrated excellent reservoir, and well B, which encountered tight reservoir, show that the reservoir porosity development in the Unayzah leads to stretching the BKDC event. This phenomenon can be detected using mean amplitude and similarity attributes as well as neural network classification of seismic data windows around the BKDC reflection. In addition to the acoustic impedance and amplitude attributes, the reservoir can be delineated utilizing frequency domain attributes. Synthetic data show that reservoir porosity development leads to reduction in the apparent high frequency content of the BKDC reflection. Frequency domain attributes such as the centroid frequency are used to map area characterized by low frequency BKDC reflections to define the reservoir. The different attribute maps show very similar optimal reservoir distribution in the 3D seismic survey area, which increases the confidence in the fidelity of the seismic data used for the analysis and the resulting reservoir maps.

Acknowledgment
We would like to acknowledge the following colleagues for their discussions and comments: Martin Dickens, Salem Al-Juhani, Kent Norton and Mohammad Saggaf.

References
1. Senalp, M., Al-Duaiji, A., Sequence stratigraphy of the Unayzah reservoir in central Saudi Arabia, Saudi Aramco Journal of Technology, Summer 2001, p. 20-40.