An Integrated Workflow for Reservoir Sweet Spot

Identification
Freia Henery, Laura Trimbitasu, James Johnson
Schlumberger DCS Reservoir Seismic Services, Calgary
FHenery@slb.com

Introduction
Seismic methods can be utilized in tight sand and shale gas reservoir characterization studies to
achieve an improved understanding of reservoir structure, heterogeneity and stress magnitude
and orientation. Application of geomodeling techniques leads to identified production sweet
spots which are compared to production data. The workflow presented here is applied to the
marine silt Lower Doig reservoir.

Reservoir Characterisation
AVO inversion for rock properties was performed on an area of the WesternGeco Wembley
Valhalla 3D seismic using ISIS*, a Schlumberger proprietary method based on a unique
combination of an advanced global search algorithm and a non-linear cost function.
AVAZ Fractogram* was also applied to the 3D seismic. This analysis is based on the concept
that vertically oriented fractures (or differential horizontal stress) will cause seismic waves to
propagate differently depending on the orientation of the seismic ray path with respect to the
fracture orientation. This variation in AVO response may be characterized as an ellipse, which is
estimated for every sample in a 3D wide-azimuth survey producing percentage anisotropy and
orientation volumes.
The Ant Tracking* attribute was generated using a complex algorithm in Petrel* which begins
with structural smoothing and edge detection algorithms. A large number of digital "ants are
then distributed in the seismic volume, emitting digital "pheromones along what appear to be
discontinuity surfaces. Surfaces meeting selected criteria will be strongly marked by
"pheromones and surfaces that are not fault-like will be weakly marked and terminated.

Reservoir Geomodeling
Logs from five wells, formation tops and corresponding interpreted seismic horizons were used
to construct a geo-cellular framework and a velocity model in Petrel*. The velocity model was
then used to depth convert all the seismic reservoir characterization volumes described in the
previous section. The geological model was populated with reservoir properties based on logs,
trends established using well log cross-plots (such as Vquartz from Vp/Vs) and directly from the
seismic reservoir property volumes. Petrel* was then used to cross-plot the 3D reservoir
property volumes and assign deterministic reservoir facies, petrophysical and geomechanical
quality classifications. Each class was weighted in a formula devised to generate an overall
reservoir classification volume.

Closing the Gap 2011 Gussow Geoscience Conference

Sweet Spot Identification

The resultant reservoir quality classification volume, shown in Figure 1 correlates well with
known average monthly production from the Doig formation (circled wells). The colors represent
the thickness of the sweet spots. Grey areas mapped represent lower reservoir quality.

Figure 1: Production sweet spot map for the Lower Doig reservoir zone.

Closing the Gap 2011 Gussow Geoscience Conference