Paris Basin: Quantitative Oil Potential Evaluation

Lepoutre, Manoelle¹, Jean-Marie Masset², Gerard Sambet³ (1) Total E&P, Pau, France (2) Total, Paris, France (3) Total E&P, Stavanger, Norway

The onshore Paris Basin is a very mature oil province located in the Northern part of France,. More than 800 exploration wells have been drilled from the early 1950’s to the mid 1990’s. Some significant discoveries of around several millions of barrels have been discov­ered, the largest and most famous being Chaunoy, Villeperdue and Champotran, but most of discoveries were less than 2Mbl. The ultimate discovered reserves are estimated at around 300 Mbls, split among 3 main reservoirs; the Dogger carbonates, the Keuper sand­stones and dolomites, and the Rhaetian sands. Some other fields have been found in the Neocomian sands. Source Rock is the Liassic interval. Relief features are of very little mag­nitude. From Early Mesozoic, a progressive tilt from East to West open the basin to Western and North Western influx resulting in a variety of lithology, and gentle thickness variations, regional onlaps, or truncations. An integrated evaluation succeeded in a qualitative and quantitative petroleum evaluation of the remaining potential of the basin:

Sequence stratigraphy concepts were applied with excellent biostratigraphic and log control, but with insufficient seismic data quality for the necessary resolution.

A Source Rock potential assessment of all sedimentary levels, fluid signature and source rock correlation with geochemical biomarkers, fluid and Source Rock direct maturity.

A complete regional mapping of all key geological intervals built from a large seismic data base used to understand main structural events, paleogeography of play horizon, geo­dynamics and the migration of hydrocarbon from the kitchen areas to the traps.