A Case Made for Integrated Studies

Sunit K. Addy¹, Gabino Castillo¹, Sergio Ibanez¹, Flavia Garbarino¹, Rene Martinez¹, Francisco Mosqueda², Gonzalo Meza², and Rafael Jeronimo^2
1 Compania Mexicana de Geofisica, Villahermosa, Mexico
² Pemex, Cd. Pemex, Mexico

New opportunities in a mature basin are often very elusive. The secret in identifying them lies in reprocessing of old seismic data, reinterpretation invoking principles of seismic stratigraphy, integrating production data, petrophysics from the wells, special processings such as AVO, inversion etc. All of the above constitute parts of an integrated study.

The Macuspana basin is a mature basin in Southeast Mexico where hydrocarbon was discovered in early part of the 20th century. It is a predominantly gas-prone basin with production of 5.4 TCF of gas and limited oil from Mio-Pliocene clastics in approximately 35 fields of varying sizes. Recently, several fields in the southern part of the basin were subjects of integrated studies. The total cost was only a small fraction of the drilling budget. In most cases, the 3D seismic data were enhanced by state of the art processing, such as, noise attenuation, removal of multiples, boosting of the high frequency, dense picking of the velocities and pre-stack time migration, AVO and 3D stratigraphic inversion. As results of these studies, new discoveries were made in Vernet (13.5 BCF in AS51 interval), Cafeto Sur (71 BCF and 5 MMBO), Shishito (21 MMBO and 30 BCF) and Viche (8 BCF) along with identification of numerous new opportunities. In case of Cobo and Bitzal, the use of inversion and AVO data improved the reserve estimations of individual sands. These examples will demonstrate that a small investment in integrated studies results in a return that is many fold.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90039©2005 AAPG Calgary, Alberta, June 16-19, 2005