New Offshore Exploration Opportunities Within the Salina Del Istmo Basin, Mexico

Abstract

In 2013 when the government of Mexico passed the energy reforms that opened exploration to non-national oil companies, a surge of interest prompted the need for a more complete understanding of the imaging challenges associated with the Mexican ridges, the Catemaco fold belt and the Salina Del Istmo basin. With the timing and rules of the bid rounds established, WesternGeco designed and acquired nearly 72,000 km² of deep water 3D wide azimuth seismic integrated with regional data, wells and potential field data. The objective was simple: Provide a powerful new direction for improved imaging to help unlock and de-risk opportunities within the offshore basins of the southern Gulf of Mexico by better understanding the geologic structural and stratigraphic evolution, and thereby refining and possibly redirecting the overall exploration potential of the area.

As seen for years in the northern Gulf of Mexico and other parts of the world, wide azimuth seismic acquisition (WAZ) data has become a prime exploration component in unlocking the secrets and potential of deep water marine basins. Data uplift over earlier narrow azimuth efforts (NAZ) has been a major paradigm shift forward and absolutely critical toward better understanding the geology, especially in tectonically complex salt basins.

The Salina Del Istmo basin is a confluence of several tectonic episodes, mostly compressional, resulting in folding, thrusts and energetically mobilized salt. Hydrocarbon source and generation within the basin is for the most part regionally predictable based on burial history and maturation timing. Although exploratory well successes to date have been somewhat unpredictable, recent discoveries in the area have shown the significant potential of the Tertiary clastic reservoirs as well as the prolific Mesozoic carbonates proven in Campeche shallow water. The Zama-1 well drilled earlier this year has been announced as one of Mexico’s largest Miocene oil discoveries in the last 20 years.

In this paper we will look at the prospectivity of Campeche, what the new improved images reveal, how the salt geometries and tectonic forces change over the area noting the differing salt and structural provinces and how those changes affect the play types and exploration potential.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90323 ©2018 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, Salt Lake City, Utah, May 20-23, 2018