The New Exploration Challenge: Finding the Basin Center Resources

Abdulla A. Al-Naim*, Mohammed J. Al-Mahmoud, and AbdelFattah M. Bakhiet
Saudi Aramco
*[email protected]

Unconventionally trapped oil and gas will play an important role in meeting the world’s thirst for hydrocarbon products in the next few decades. Basin center gas (BCG) accumulations are one of the important economic unconventional hydrocarbon plays that is known to exist in many basins of the world. It is also referred to as tight gas sand, deep basin gas, and continuous gas accumulation. It has been the subject of exploration and production for the last three decades in the United States and Canada. Thousands of wells have been drilled and geologic models for this resource, which promises to be vast, have been established. Generally, basin center gas is characterized as being a regionally extended accumulation of gas that is not conventionally trapped, abnormally pressured (high or low), commonly lacks a down-dip water contact, and has low-permeability reservoirs. The accumulation ranges from single, isolated reservoirs, a few feet thick, to multiple stacked reservoirs that are several thousand feet thick. To find and exploit these resources, many challenges have to be addressed. These challenges include geological, geophysical, drilling and completion techniques. In immature basins, such as the Arabian basin, the exploration for basin center gas requires a shift in exploration thinking that may impact the data acquisition, processing, and interpretation methods. Under these conditions, technology plays a major role in optimizing the exploration results.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90077©2008 GEO 2008 Middle East Conference and Exhibition, Manama, Bahrain