Identifying New Material Hydrocarbon Plays. The Challenge and an Approach

Hamilton, Robin¹, David Steele², Colin Grant³, Pedro Restrepo-Pace¹, Larry Garmezy¹ (1) Shell International, Houston, TX (2) Shell Houston, Houston, TX (3) Shell International Exploration and Production, Houston, TX

In the process of developing new play concepts within Shell's Basin Framework Studies group, a framework is built around the existing technical understanding of the working petroleum system in the basin. The key foundational elements of petroleum charge, stratigraphy and entrapment are individually expressed. The objective is to identify, map and exploit both the technical and more often, intellectual 'white space' that exists around our understanding of a focal basin or petroleum system. In the simplest sense, new ideas are most often grown within these gaps or discontinuities in basin understanding. There are then some useful 'prompts' that serve to seed some of the new play ideas – Go Deep initiates a structured review of possible plays, stratigraphically deeper than the proven play levels but within the same overall petroleum charge system. It follows that Go Shallow triggers an interrogation of the shallower limits of the petroleum system where the questions are often more around developability of any shallower resource. Go lateral prompts a search for prospective stratigraphy, laterally offset to the known section. It would include the identification of basinward equivalents of missing section seen at the basin margins and the candidate stratigraphic traps downdip of conventional trap plays. The 'Lateral' screen also involves investigation of the lateral limits of the charge system and the possible new play configurations that could be invoked through long range lateral migration.

The talk will illustrate successful application of the approach with case examples and an outline of the global play database that has been built to allow the identification and application of appropriate play analogues whilist building new plays.