Brunei Shell Petroleums Exploration Rejuvenation

Abstract

Brunei Shell Petroleum operates in Brunei's onshore and offshore acreage since the early 19 hundreds. Onshore to Deepwater Slope acreage are mature and proven HC provinces. The continued, long-term viability of Brunei's onshore and offshore provinces combined with a looming license expiry milestone required the complete inventory of BSPs Exploration acreage and rejuvenation of her Exploration portfolio. A number of subsurface challenges pose a hurdle to advance the comprehensive subsurface evaluation in Brunei: Gas Clouds obscure seismic data, presence of gas-charged silts disables QI, intense faulting around the discovered fields imposes barriers to trap definition, and finally the distribution of reservoir on shelf and in deepwater settings is a mystery. Following a phase of technology selection trials, BSP embarked on an intense Exploration Rejuvenation campaign in 2012/2013, which saw the largest part of offshore acreage covered with 3D Broadseis (7000km²) and a dense grid of 3D CSEM data (4500km²). This included the regional acquisition of shallow water 3D CSEM data (2500km²), an industry first! The acquisition activities, processing, and the expected massive evaluation work required organizational change and growth: Dedicated teams in Rijswijk and Houston, and Seria were setup to collaborate on new processing workflows, specifically designed for these datasets. New workflows to combine Broadseis and CSEM data (via a resistivity cube) are being trialed in multidisciplinary “CSEM-QI-Geoscience” Growth teams in Seria. To address the evaluation challenges, the Exploration department needed to be restructured and increased, to ensure that new growth - and ongoing deep, HP-NFE activities could proceed in parallel. A significant effort was spent in re-establishing stratigraphic framework and creation of gross depositional environment maps, based on regional sculpts of seismic data. In 2013 alone, BSP increased its Exploration portfolio by over 30%. This is expected to continue at this pace in 2014 and 2015. In addition, BSP has established itself as a leader in the application of several new Exploration technologies. The rejuvenation strategy deployed in Brunei's mature Exploration Heartland can also be applied in new basin /new ventures settings, where regional scanning tools are used to create new Exploration portfolios.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90194 © 2014 International Conference & Exhibition, Istanbul, Turkey, September 14-17, 2014