Summary

Over recent years changes in the application of biostratigraphy in the reservoir and appraisal and development arena have greatly increased the impact and value of the discipline, giving it a central role in integrated reservoir description. These changes include placing emphasis on local field-scale bioevents to erect a reservoir framework of time-slices through which reservoir heterogeneity can be modelled, and the application of biosteering to maximise reservoir penetration. In addition, palaeoenvironmentally diagnostic benthonic microfacies are used to model the lateral continuity of intra-reservoir mudstones, in an attempt to understand their potential as baffles/barriers to fluid flow. This cost-effective methodology is discussed by reference to three Palaeocene reservoirs from the North Sea UKCS; the Donan, Forties and Andrew fields.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90937©1998 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, Salt Lake City, Utah