--> Exploration of the Frontier Phu Khanh Basin

International Conference & Exhibition

Datapages, Inc.Print this page

Exploration of the Frontier Phu Khanh Basin

Abstract

The Phu Khanh Basin is a Tertiary rift-related basin located in the western margin of the South China Sea, offshore Central Vietnam. Recent 3D seismic acquisition has provided new insights into the paleo-depositional environment, structural framework and petroleum potential of the Basin. The Phu Khanh Basin is situated to the North of the Cuu Long and Nam Con Son Basins and to the South of the Song Hong Basin. The basin is bound to the west by the present day shelf and passive margin. The Phu Khanh Basin exhibits early rift sequences separated from a later sag phase by a major Middle Miocene unconformity representing regional uplift and erosion. Although seismic exploration in the Phu Khanh Basin began in the early 1970's, the basin is still largely unexplored with no deep-water penetrations and only 3 wells drilled on the shelf. As a result, basin-fill and rift timing has been inferred from extrapolation of shelfal intersections and analogous South China Sea basins where exploration is more advanced. The recently acquired Xuan Dai 3D seismic survey is a high quality, broadband dataset recorded in roughly 2500m of water. The deep water environment lends itself to very high quality seismic data, with the water-bottom multiple arriving well beyond the target interval. Detailed interrogation of this dataset has revealed geometries that provide a glimpse into the paleo-depositional environment and tectonic regime. Observed features include mass transport complexes, deep-water fans with associated channel complexes, regional unconformities, amplitude conformance, and syn-rift/inversion geometries. Interpretation of these features in the context of other South China Sea basins has assisted in narrowing the timing of basin rift/fill and enabled identification of various play elements set in a chrono-stratigraphic framework. The new seismic data provide indications of a working petroleum system with amplitude conformance to structure and positive AVO signatures.